RUSSIAN ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin is extremely well-informed. On Sunday, he told fellow members of the UN Security Council that bringing peace to Syria was “virtually impossible.” His words should be taken as highly authoritative, since it is Moscow that directly or indirectly is responsible for making peace and impossibility .
At the same meeting, when America’s UN ambassador Samantha Power accused Russia of supporting barbarity, Churkin’s face remained impassive. He did however appear to be surprised when, as the Syrian envoy began to address the council, the US, French and British UN envoys got up from their seats and walked out.
The real reason for the week-long truce that US Secretary of State John Kerry considered such a triumph now seems clear. The Assad dictatorship needed time to maneuver for a final assault on rebel-held Aleppo. It also knew that the ceasefire would cause civilians to grasp the opportunity to get out of their shelters, to relax their vigilance. In addition, the assault on the Aleppo-bound UN aid convoy would not have been possible had not UN officials trusted the Russians and their puppet Assad regime to honor the ceasefire. One of the most resonant details of the repeated treacherous attacks on that convoy and warehousing was the sense of disbelief and despair among the aid workers as they saw their colleagues being blown to bits or burning to death trapped in the lorry cabs. This was an unforgivable betrayal of monstrous proportions, alien to all civilized and humane standards.
US envoy Power’s use of the word “barbarous” was altogether inadequate. Even barbarians had some sort of principles.
It is instructive that other aid convoys, to both rebel-held and Assad-regime enclaves have so far got through without incident. In the circumstances, the courage of those drivers and aid personnel accompanying them cannot be praised too highly. And if Russian president Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the poker-faced UN ambassador Churkin chose to think about it, the humanity and sense of duty of these individuals ought to shame everyone in the Kremlin machine. It did not matter that they were bringing aid to supporters of the bloody Assad regime or to those who have risen up against the tyrant — what counted was that they were helping fellow human beings and already knew that it was perfectly possible that they could pay for this noble and disinterested bravery with their lives.
The awful truth is that Putin has once again outplayed and outmaneuvered Washington and its Western allies, who claim to stand for decency and the rule of law. Putin has occupied the Crimea from the Ukrainians and he then went on to seize the east of that country. His troops then shot down an international airliner. Putin’s punishment has been feeble sanctions from Washington and even feebler sanctions from the EU. Now he is actively fighting savagely alongside the dictator Assad and cozying up to an aggressive and meddling Iranian regime which, in an act of geopolitical insanity, the Obama regime has freed from crippling economic sanctions.
And what is most depressing is that the best that the Americans, British and French can produce by way of response to Moscow’s endless cynicism are angry words and pathetic gesture politics such as walking out of the Security Council. Putin and Assad must be quaking in their boots.
