U.S.-led coalition air strikes killed dozens of Syrian soldiers on Saturday, endangering a U.S.-Russian ceasefire and prompting an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting as tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated.
Just a few days ago it was reported that Putin felt that if anything happened to damage the tentative ceasefire agreement that it would be Obama’s fault. Seems he was right.
The United States military said the coalition stopped the attacks against what it had believed to be Islamic State positions in northeast Syria after Russia informed it that Syrian military personnel and vehicles may have been hit.
The United States relayed its “regret” through the Russian government for what it described as the unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces in the strike, a senior Obama administration official said in an emailed statement.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in an emailed statement that Russian officials did not voice concerns earlier on Saturday when informed that coalition aircraft would be operating in the strike area. The 15-member Security Council met on Saturday night after Russia demanded an emergency session to discuss the incident and accused the United States of jeopardizing the Syria deal.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, chastised Russia for the move. “Russia really needs to stop the cheap point scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters, which is implementation of something we negotiated in good faith with them,” Power told reporters. She said the United States was investigating the air strikes and “if we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention and we of course regret the loss of life.”
When asked if the incident spelled the end of the Syria deal between Moscow and Washington, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said: “This is a very big question mark.”
“I would be very interested to see how Washington is going to react. If what Ambassador Power has done today is any indication of their possible reaction then we are in serious trouble,” Churkin told reporters. Moscow cited the strikes, which allowed Islamic State fighters to briefly overrun a Syrian army position near Deir al-Zor airport, as evidence that the United States was helping the jihadist militants.
“We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying. Power said Zakharova should be embarrassed by that claim. Churkin said Russia had no “specific evidence” of the United States colluding with Islamic State militants.
The Syrian conflict has been a tug-o-war between Washington and Moscow for some time now. Both Putin an Obama have pulled maneuvers that could have been detrimental to all involved, but this latest air-strike was such an obvious and epic failure that Obama can’t hide from. We have all felt that he supports the Islamic State terror group and if this “accident” doesn’t show that then nothing will. Lets hope an pray that the ramifications aren’t too harsh.
The discussions are still being maintained in a diplomatic way thankfully and they haven’t reached a level of action by Russia against the U.S. as of yet.
H/T [ Reuters ]
