Washington and its allies pursue their geopolitical interests under the guise of humanitarian concerns as they apparently try to prevent the destruction of the last terrorist enclave in Syria, the Russian envoy to the UN said.
The US and its allies have done virtually nothing to contribute to the real peace process in Idlib, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia said, adding that the US particularly did not deliver on its promise to separate the “moderate opposition” groups from the terrorist organizations.
“Instead, [they] are hatching yet another aggressive plan, which includes false flag attacks involving the use of chemical weapons,” the envoy said.
The Western states apparently “go out of their way to prevent the fall of the last major terrorist stronghold in Syria,” Nebenzia said, adding that such actions serve some narrow geopolitical interests rather than the declared need to protect civilians.
The hysterical campaign that has unfolded around the upcoming liberation of Idlib closely resembles the one that the Western officials and the media waged at the time when the Syrian troops backed by the Russian Air Forces were liberating Aleppo. “Those apocalyptic forecasts turned out to be unfounded,” Nebenzia said, referring to the Western hysteria about the Aleppo campaign.
“Meanwhile, Raqqa was leveled to the ground as a result of the bombings of the US-led coalition,” he said, referring to another Syrian city, which was recaptured from the terrorists by the forces backed by the US and its allies, with the Western MSM mentioning little of its plight.
The image of Idlib presented by the West has in fact little in common with reality, Nebenzia said. “Those, who evacuated to Idlib from other Syrian regions were not some peaceful civilians but notorious militants, who refused to lay down their arms and return to normal life,” the Russian envoy to the UN said, adding that large forces of Al-Qaeda-affiliated former Al Nusra Front (now known as Tahrir al-Sham) have been concentrated in the militant-held province.
“The real situation in Idlib is defined through the activities of this large and combat-capable terrorist group,” Nebenzia said, adding that the terrorists pose a serious security threat both to the region and the entire world.
“The terrorists in Idlib hold millions of people hostage and raid neighboring cities and villages,” Nebenzia said. He pointed out that they also persecute any dissenting voices within the ranks of the local armed groups commanders, effectively quelling any attempts of a peaceful reconciliation with the Syrian government by killing the dissidents.
Under such circumstances, “it is unacceptable to let the terrorists off the hook for some political goals,” Nebenzia said – let alone supply them with military-grade weapons, which, the envoy said, they obtain from local armed groups.
In response, the US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said that Washington “will not cooperate with Russia” in what she called “[Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s slaughter of civilians.” Haley then went on to accusing the Syrian government and “its enablers, Russia and Iran” of having a “playbook of death,” which includes targeting civilians and waging “starve and surrender campaigns.”
She particularly claimed that the people in Daraa and Eastern Ghouta, which were both liberated by the Syrian Army backed by the Russian Air Forces earlier this year, were “trapped and besieged”, without even mentioning the humanitarian corridors that the Syrian troops organized together with the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria to let civilians leave the active combat zones.
Instead, she said that Washington would consider any operation in Idlib “a dangerous escalation of the conflict in Syria” and warned of “dire consequences” of such development.
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