Russian senators blast US military action in Syria in address to world parliaments

“At the moment when the United States delivered its missile strike there was not a single independent and unbiased conclusion about the real circumstances of the events that were used as an excuse for this, or about persons that must be held responsible for this,” reads the Russian senators’ address, referring to an alleged chemical weapons release in Idlib province, Syria.

“At the same time, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Syrian Armed Forces currently have no supplies of chemical weapons.”

Head of the Committee for International Relations Konstantin Kosachev commented that the reported chemical attack in Idlib, which prompted President Donald Trump to order the missile attack, could be anything “down to a staged show,” and any conclusions about anyone’s involvement in these gruesome events must be made after thorough investigation.

“The cover-up of the United States’ aggressive activities by the Western part of the international community and their loyal satellites is just an attempt to use collective responsibility for removing oneself from the field of the international law and securing the implementation of one’s own geopolitical strategies,” Kosachev told Russian senators. “Leaders in Washington replace one another, but their methods remain unchanged.”

The Federation Council also called upon the parliaments of all nations to “resolutely denounce the unlawful actions of the United States against a sovereign country – the Syrian Arab Republic – and to support the effort that leads to the conflict settlement on the basis of resolutions issued by the UN Security Council.”

After the senators unanimously voted to pass the address, Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said that the document would be forwarded to foreign parliaments and international inter-parliamentary bodies in the nearest future.

Earlier this week, the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, passed a separate address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in which Russian MPs described the attack on Shayrat Airbase as a blatant violation of international law, while demanding that nations abstain from using military force or threatening to use it and refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign countries.

The US missile raid also prompted Russia to suspend the memorandum of understanding on flight safety in Syria with the United States.

President Vladimir Putin said in a TV interview that he sees Russia-US relations in decline under Trump.

“I would say the level of trust [between Russia and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn’t improved. On the contrary, it has degraded,” Putin stated.