Russia on Sunday prepared to ramp up its bombing campaign in Syria as Moscow challenged the West’s distinction between jehadist and other Islamist rebel groups.
Russian bombing raids against what Moscow says are Islamic State targets went into their fifth day despite criticism from Washington and its allies that the military action may be strengthening the jihadists.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said that Russia’s Western partners had failed to explain the term “moderate opposition” as monitors claimed that Russian jets had bombed two Syrian villages, killing one person.
Putin, who met the leaders of France and Germany in Paris on Friday, had “expressed a lively interest in the subject and asked what the difference between the moderate opposition and the immoderate opposition is,” Dmitry Peskov said on television late yesterday.
“So far, no one really has managed to explain what the moderate opposition is.”
Washington accuses Russia of seeking to buttress Syria’s Bashar al-Assad blamed for unleashing a conflict that has killed more than 240,000 people over the past four years and making little distinction between Western-backed moderate opposition and IS fighters. But Moscow is keen to turn the tables on Washington, suggesting it is Washington and its allies that often hit the wrong targets. “When the conversation has turned to this, our president remembered,” Peskov said of the Paris talks.
“He also remembered the wedding in Yemen and so on,” Peskov added, referring to more than 130 people killed during the recent bombing of a wedding for which the Saudi-led coalition denied responsibility.
An apparent US air strike on an Afghan hospital that killed 19 people yesterday is also expected to play into the Kremlin’s hands.