MOSCOW, Russia: In response to the US attack on a Syrian airbase, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the attack violated the International Law, and insisted the Syrian army didn’t possess chemical weapons.
Earlier, the United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian airbase from Navy destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean; destroying Syrian jets, defence system, petroleum and logistical storage, air defence system and radars.
In a statement, the Russian President’s Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Putin “regards the (US) strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation.”
The spokesman said that Putin believes the strikes were conducted “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext,” reported RT.
The Russian president’s spokesman insisted that “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons,” adding that this had been “observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a special UN unit.”
Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian president sees the US missile strike on Syria as an attempt to distract attention from civilian casualties in Iraq.”
“This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state,” he added.
The US attack was carried out after Bashar al-Assad’s Syrain government on Tuesday allegedly killed about 70 people mostly children in rebel-controlled north-western Idlib province by using chemical weapons.
