Opinions Russia-Ukraine war: Putin targets Ukrainian civilians because he could in Syria
The Syrianisation of the Ukraine war is no coincidence. Russia got away with it once — and believes it will again.
Zaher Sahloul
President and Co-Founder of MedGlobal
19 May 2023
In 2015, when Russia began its military intervention in Syria, it seemed that the barbarism in the region was too significant for the international community to turn away from.
Abundant reports by United Nations commissions, as well as accountability, human rights, and humanitarian organisations, documented war crimes with pictures, videos, and firsthand testimony. The world has watched countless incidents of missiles destroying hospitals or mutilated Syrian children covered in dust and blood being pulled from the rubble of destroyed apartment buildings.
By some accounts, the documentation of war crimes in Syria is the strongest evidence since the crimes of the Nazis in World War II. And yet, the international community failed to act. No one was held accountable. Syria was a test case for the resolve of the world on how to respond to a brutal aggressor that justifies attacking civilians and hospitals. Inaction in Syria gave Putin the green light to start another brutal war to swallow another big chunk of territory from his neighbour, Ukraine.
“The people of Syria received no adequate international protection, and this gave the Kremlin and its accomplices a sense of impunity,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in March. “Russian bombs were destroying Syrian cities in the same way as they are our Ukrainian cities. It is in this impunity that a significant part of the Kremlin’s current aggressiveness lies.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/5/19/putin-targets-ukrainian-civilians-because-he-could-in-syria?sf178108689=1
( Yep. )
