Moscow ‘weaponizes’ Syrian refugees

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands accused of using fleeing Syrian refugees as a weapon against the West in general and Europe in particular. The accusation is that the carpet bombing of civilian areas in Syria by Russian warplanes is not the result of inadequate or ineffective targeting technology, but is instead a coldly-calculated tactic to drive as many terrified refugees as possible toward the European Union. It is not hard to see why Putin would be aiming this weapon of flesh and blood at the Europeans. The EU has challenged Russia over its seizure of Crimea and is backing Ukraine as that country seeks to resist a clearly Moscow-sponsored and equipped insurrection in the Russian-speaking eastern borderlands.  The EU has imposed sanctions on Russia in line with the measures also taken by Washington. Putin wants a way to strike back. Brussels is already in chaos over the tide of migrants that have arrived from Libya and Turkey.  The open borders of the Schengen Area treaty meant that EU citizens and foreign visitors could pass from one country to another without going through any border checks at all. The arrangement was a source of huge pride for the Euro-enthusiasts in Brussels. For them it was a major step toward political union via a strict federation and ultimately toward a United States of Europe. But the Paris terror attacks were perpetrated by killers of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) who were able to pass in and out of France with their guns and explosives completely unmonitored. This caused the French to have a rethink. Now other governments are reconsidering their position. The tidal wave of human misery surging toward EU countries is already causing some member states to effectively abandon Schengen. Austria, Slovenia and Hungary have barricaded their borders to try and stem the tide. The growing disarray and name-calling within the EU is producing a crisis far more profound in its political implications than the near collapse of the inherently-weak euro single currency. The UK votes in June on whether or not to leave the EU. Some pundits are saying that within the next four months, there may no longer be an EU for the British to leave. That seems overly pessimistic but there can be no doubting the fact that the European Union consistently proves itself fundamentally incapable of handling crises. When the chips are down, individual governments abandon their European vision and look to their own national interests. The Brussels chaos plays to Moscow’s advantage. Undermine the EU and by extension, NATO is undermined. America sees its European partners paralyzed by disagreement, at the heart of which sits NATO member Turkey home to more than two million Syrian refugees. If Putin is indeed “weaponizing” the refugee problem by deliberately attacking civilian areas to boost the numbers who decide to flee, it is a war crime of almost unbelievable depravity.  If this is the measure of Russia’s strongman, then he has placed himself in the same gutter as Lenin and Stalin, who were perfectly prepared to starve or butcher millions of their  fellow Russians for their own perverted purposes. What is even more reprehensible is that the bloodstained Bashar Assad can connive at the use of his own people as a battering ram to crack the already damaged edifice of the EU.