Moscow, Russia. The Kremlin reacted to the news of the American attack with open displeasure and calm restraint. US warships launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield overnight in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack that Washington has blamed on Syria’s government without solid evidence.
Russian reaction was swift,”President Putin considers the US strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that,” Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said, according to TASS and other Russian news sources.
The spokesperson went on to frame Russia’s condemnation further, “President Putin also sees the strikes on Syria by the US. as an attempt to divert the attention of the international community from numerous civilian casualties in Iraq,” Peskov added, “Washington’s move impairs the Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state.”
Kremlin spokesperson Peskov was also quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons, having surrendered them to a joint US-Russian commission in 2014 and that U.S. airstrikes would create a serious obstacle to President Putin’s plans for forming an international coalition against terrorism.
Others in Russian government demanded more immediate diplomatic action, Viktor Ozerov, the head of the upper house of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee, said Russia would now call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the matter, according to the RIA news agency.