Putin stands by Assad as firm evidence of chemical attack mounts
Vladimir Putin has doubled down on his support for the Syrian government despite the release of postmortem results by Turkey that confirmed chemical weapons were used in an attack that killed at least 72 people in north Syria.
The Russian president attacked “groundless accusations” that Damascus was responsible for the assault, and called for a “detailed and unbiased investigation” into the deaths, a Kremlin statement said.
Russia’s defence ministry has argued that Syrian planes were destroying chemical weapons, not deploying them, and said the airstrikes targeted a rebel storage depot for toxins. That claim has been widely dismissed as implausible by experts.
As firm evidence of chemical weapons use mounted – along with calls for Russia to restrain the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad – Putin’s spokesman attempted to put some distance between the two allies.
“Unconditional support is not possible in this current world,” Dmitry Peskov told Associated Press, adding that Russia could not control the Syrian leader.
But Peskov also offered implicit support to the Damascus regime by repeating the argument that the chemical weapons that killed so many had belonged to rebels. Asked for proof, he said Russia’s military presence in Syria mean t it had “more wide information” about what was “going on there”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/postmortems-confirm-syria-chemical-attack-turkey-says
