Russian President Vladimir Putin who is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has described last night’s attack on Syria by the United States and its collaborators, UK and France, as a violation of the UN Charter and international law.
The US, UK and France, at about 2100hrs yesterday, launched coordinated air strikes in Syria, hitting targets associated with the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons program. The strikes were conducted before a team of investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was due to reach Douma to determine whether the attack had indeed taken place.
But in a statement released earlier today by the Russian Presidency, Putin said Washington launched “an aggression against a sovereign state which is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism,”.
The strongman of Moscow stressed that the multi-national strikes were not sanctioned by the UN Security Council and were carried out “in violation of the UN Charter and principles of international law.”
He added that the current escalation of the Syrian crisis has “a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations.” Yet, history will set things straight as “it has already found Washington responsible for massacres in Yugoslavia. In fact, by using force, Washington is only prompting a new wave of asylum-seekers from Syria and the whole region, according to the Russian leader.
Meanwhile, Russia is calling an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the aggressive actions of the US and its allies, the statement concluded.
Reactions from different parts of the world are varied the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei condemned the airstrikes on Syrian soil, describing the leaders of the UK, US, and France “criminals.” He added that the attack will not result in any “benefits,” after making reference to past US-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
While Germany did not join the US precision strikes on Syrian targets overnight (as the United Kingdom and France did), the country does support the action taken to deter the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons on its own citizens, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday morning.
British Prime Minister Theresa May said that the strikes against Syria were “absolutely in Britain’s national interest.”
She said the action was taken to reinforce international norms against the use of chemical weapons, adding that the use of a “nerve agent on Britain’s streets is part of a systematic pattern of disregarding these norms.”
Reacting to the US, France and UK strikes on Syria, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that all countries are obliged to act within the ambits of the UN Charter when dealing with matters of peace and security.
Photo Credit: Maxim Shipenkov / AFP