RIA Novosti: Pundits Dismiss Russian Trace In UN Report On Chemical Attack In Syria

(RIA Novosti – September 17, 2013) Armed Syrian opposition could have used parts of Soviet ammunition when preparing the chemical attack in the vicinity of Damascus, editor-in-chief of the Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defense) magazine Igor Korotchenko told RIA Novosti news agency on 17 September.

The UN report confirming the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which was published on 16 September, said that one of the missile engines found at the site was marked with Cyrillic letters.

“If we proceed from the version that this provocation was planned and used to justify the US strike on Syria, and the Syrian armed opposition took part in it, then the use of any ammunition elements produced in the Soviet Union or in Russia plays into the hands of the West. The logic of a version like that is obvious – to lead the investigation to a false path by stating that the Syrian government troops used chemical weapons, and to link Russia to that event,” Korotchenko said.

“Syrian armed opposition has already used provocation of such a kind: let me recall the situation with the documents of the allegedly killed Russian general that were shown at the time when that person had left Syria long before that and was in Moscow, safe and sound,” Korotchenko said, adding that such provocations should be treated in a calm and an unbiased way.

The head of the Centre of Analytical Research, Semen Bagdasarov, supported the view that Cyrillic marking could mean anything: “This (Cyrillic letters on the missile engine) says nothing. It just confirms that similar weapons could be in the hands of the opposition. Similar types of arms were left back at the time at Libyan (storehouses of weapons). The Libyan storehouses, unfortunately, are now all controlled by those who sponsor the (Syrian) opposition. It’s not a secret that Libya and those warehouses that are left there contain mainly Russian and Soviet arms, which now come into operation of the so-called Syrian opposition – both the Free Army of Syria and terrorist groups like the Victory Front…

“Political significance (of the UN report) is that we got a pause in the Syrian developments. The pause which will be interrupted one day, as the West – and the USA in the first place, and the Saudi Arabian lobby sponsoring, let’s be frank, that operation, and Saudi Arabia itself – will search for a maximum amount of reasons to interfere with the internal affairs of the Syrian conflict with the help of rockets and air bombs, that’s it,” Bagdasarov told privately-owned business channel RBK.