Tag Archives: Putin

Russia and USA, after Tillerson talks, agree modest steps to mend ties

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a news conference following their talks in Moscow, Russia,

By Yeganeh Torbati and Denis Dyomkin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia and the United States agreed to set up a working group to try to mend their battered ties on Wednesday after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held lengthy talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin and the Russian foreign minister.

It was not clear until the last minute whether Putin would grant Tillerson an audience, but the fact that he did is likely to be seen as a sign that Moscow has not given up on the new U.S. administration and wants to try to improve ties which both sides agree are languishing at a post Cold War low.

A joint news conference between Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Tillerson showed how much work there is to do though as the Russian used many of his speaking opportunities to lambast Washington over its actions in Syria and what he said was its unhelpful foreign interference in the past.

Tillerson, on his first visit to Russia in his current role, struck a more conciliatory stance, but said ties and trust levels were at a low point and restated Washington’s position that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must eventually relinquish power, a position starkly at odds with Russia.

“There is a low level of trust between our two countries,” Tillerson said. “The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship.”

Lavrov said that while Russia was not placing its hopes in Assad or any other individual in Syria, toppling the Syrian government was not an option and that a political process had to be allowed to play out.

“We discussed Assad today,” said Lavrov. “I don’t remember any positive examples of how a dictator was overthrown and everything was just fine afterwards.”

Differences over a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base last week also bubbled to the surface.

Washington says it acted to punish the Syrian government for what it said was a devastating nerve gas attack Damascus launched against its own people that killed scores.

Russia said the U.S. strike was illegal though and Lavrov repeated Moscow’s stance on Wednesday, saying an international investigation should be left to determine who was to blame and what happened.

It was wrong to blame Assad without knowing the facts, he said.

Tillerson said the United States was confident that Assad’s forces were behind the gas attack, but said there was “no firm information” to indicate Russian forces were involved in the same attack.

In a move that slightly softened the atmosphere, Lavrov said Putin had agreed to restore a U.S.-Russia air safety agreement covering Syria which Moscow suspended in retaliation for the U.S. missile strikes.

The agreement would be reactivated with immediate effect, Viktor Ozerov, the head of the Russian upper house of parliament’s defense committee told the RIA news agency.

(Additional reporting by Polina Devitt; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Anna Willard)

Tillerson heads to Moscow carrying Western call for Russia to abandon Assad

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson disembarks from a plane upon his arrival at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

By Steve Scherer and Andrew Osborn

LUCCA, Italy/MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson carried a message from world powers to Moscow on Tuesday denouncing Russian support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, as the Trump administration took on America’s traditional mantle as leader of a unified West.

Tillerson flew on the administration’s first cabinet mission to Russia after meeting foreign ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies and Middle Eastern allies in Italy. They endorsed a joint call for Russia to abandon Assad.

The administration of President Donald Trump, which came to power in January calling for warmer ties with Russia, was thrust into confrontation with Moscow last week when a poison gas attack in northern Syria killed 87 people.

Western countries blame President Assad for the gas attack, and Trump responded by firing cruise missiles at a Syrian air base. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stood firmly by Moscow’s ally Assad, who denies blame.

“It is clear to us the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” Tillerson told reporters in Italy before departing for Moscow. “We hope that the Russian government concludes that they have aligned themselves with an unreliable partner in Bashar Al-Assad.”

He said Russia had failed in its role as sponsor of a 2013 deal under which Assad promised to give up his chemical arsenal.

“These agreements stipulated Russia as the guarantor of a Syria free of chemical weapons,” Tillerson said.

“It is unclear whether Russia failed to take this obligation seriously and whether Russia has been incompetent. But this distinction doesn’t much matter to the dead. We can’t let this happen again.”

Russia says the chemicals that killed civilians belonged to rebels, not to Assad’s government, and has accused the United States of an illegal act of aggression against Syria on a phoney pretext. Putin said on Tuesday he believed Washington planned to launch more missile strikes, and that rebels were planning to stage chemical weapons attacks to provoke them.

“We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared … in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus suburbs where they are planning to again plant some substance and accuse the Syrian authorities of using (chemical weapons),” Putin said, standing alongside Italian President Sergio Matarella who was in Moscow for talks.

Putin said Moscow would urgently ask the United Nations chemical weapons watchdog to investigate last week’s incident. Western countries have dismissed Russian suggestions that the poison gas belonged to rebels as beyond credibility.

“Russia’s allegations fit with a pattern of deflecting blame from the (Syrian) regime and attempting to undermine the credibility of its opponents,” a White House official said.

The United States, Britain and France have proposed a revised draft resolution to the 15-member U.N. Security Council that is similar to a text they circulated last week pushing Syria’s government to cooperate with investigators, diplomats said.

TURNING POINT

The secretary of state’s role as messenger for a united G7 position is a turning point for Trump, who in the past alarmed allies by voicing scepticism about the value of U.S. support for traditional friends, while calling for closer ties with Moscow.

Tillerson is a former boss of oil company Exxon Mobil which has gigantic projects in Russia. He was awarded Russia’s “Order of Friendship” by Putin in 2013.

He is due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Wednesday. The Kremlin has said Tillerson has no meeting scheduled with Putin this trip, although some Russian media have reported such a meeting may nevertheless take place.

On Monday, Trump reached out to traditional NATO allies, discussing Syria by telephone with British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“I think we have to show a united position and that in these negotiations we should do all we can to get Russia out of Assad’s corner,” German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said.

Britain floated the idea of tightening sanctions on Russia, initially imposed in 2014 over its annexation of territory from Ukraine, although no such step was agreed at the G7 meeting. France said it was not discussed in depth.

Western countries have been calling for Assad to leave power since 2011, the start of a civil war that has killed at least 400,000 people and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

Assad’s position on the battlefield became far stronger after Russia joined the war to support him in 2015. The United States and its allies are conducting air strikes in Syria against Islamic State, but until last week Washington had avoided targeting forces of Assad’s government directly.

ADDITIONAL STRIKES

The United States said its strike on the Syrian airbase near Homs on Friday was a one-off and not a strategic shift. But the White House has also said Trump could authorize more strikes if Syria uses chemical weapons again.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer suggested on Monday a lower bar for further U.S. action, saying Washington could also retaliate if Syria uses “barrel bombs” – oil drums packed with explosives dropped from aircraft.

“When you watch babies and children being gassed, and suffer under barrel bombs, you are instantaneously moved to action,” he said. “I think this president’s made it very clear that if those actions were to continue, further action will definitely be considered by the United States.”

Retaliating for barrel bombs would require a major shift in U.S. policy since rebels say the weapons are used almost daily.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said Syrian warplanes dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held areas of Hama province on Tuesday.

Syria has always denied using barrel bombs, though their use has been widely recorded by U.N. investigators. A source in the Syrian military denied it used them on Tuesday.

The U.S. missile strike increased expectations that Trump would adopt a tougher stance with respect to Russia, and engage more actively in world affairs instead of following the more isolationist position associated with some of his advisers.

Until the chemical attack, Trump had said Washington would no longer act as the world’s guardian, especially if it was not in the interests of the United States.

Trump’s previous warm words for Russia were an issue at home, where intelligence agencies accuse Moscow of using computer hacking to help him win last year’s presidential election. The FBI is investigating whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.

On Monday, Tillerson visited the site of a World War Two Nazi massacre in Italy and said Washington would never let such abuses go unchallenged.

“We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” Tillerson told reporters in Sant’Anna di Stazzema.

(writing by Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership and Tom Heneghan)

Putin says expects ‘fake’ gas attacks to discredit Syria’s Assad

Russian President Vladimir Putin talks to Italian President Sergio Mattarella during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Chirikov/Pool

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had information that the United States was planning to launch new missile strikes on Syria, and that there were plans to fake chemicals weapons attacks there.

Putin, standing alongside Italian President Sergio Mattarella who was in Moscow for talks, said Russia would tolerate Western criticism of its role in Syria but hoped that attitudes would eventually soften.

When asked whether he expected more U.S. missile strikes on Syria, he said:

“We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared … in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus suburbs where they are planning to again plant some substance and accuse the Syrian authorities of using (chemical weapons).”

He did not offer any proof for that assertion.

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Tillerson faces tough talks in Moscow amid increased tensions

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L) and Italy's Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano arrive to attend a ceremony at the Sant'Anna di Stazzema memorial, dedicated to the victims of the massacre committed in the village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema by Nazis in 1944 during World War II, Italy

By Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow this week will be an early test of whether the Trump administration can use any momentum generated by a missile attack on a Syrian air base to craft and execute a strategy to end the Syrian war.

Even before Trump ordered last week’s strike in retaliation for a nerve gas attack, Tillerson’s visit was certain to be dominated by thorny issues, including Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, an apparent violation of an important arms control treaty, and seeing what cooperation, if any, is possible in the fight against Islamic State.

Now, Tillerson, a former oil executive with no diplomatic experience, is charged with avoiding a major U.S. confrontation with Russia while exacting some concessions from Moscow. Those include getting rid of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s remaining chemical weapons and pressing Assad to negotiate Syria’s future.

The Kremlin said on Monday Tillerson was not scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit, a move that could point to tensions.

It may also suggest that Tillerson will instead follow strict diplomatic protocol and only meet his direct counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The State Department said last week a meeting had not been confirmed with Putin, who met with Tillerson when the Texan headed Exxon Mobil.

Russia, along with Iran, is Assad’s primary backer, and its intervention in Syria’s war has been crucial to ensuring his grip on power, although no longer over the entire country.

Tillerson said he had not seen hard evidence that Russia knew ahead of time about the chemical weapons attack, which killed at least 70 people, but he planned to urge Moscow to rethink its support for Assad in the April 12 talks.

“I’m hopeful that we can have constructive talks with the Russian government, with Foreign Minister Lavrov and have Russia be supportive of a process that will lead to a stable Syria,” Tillerson told ABC’s “The Week” on Sunday.

The U.S. cruise missile strike on Thursday, meant to dissuade Assad from using chemical weapons again, gives Tillerson more credibility with Russian officials and will boost his efforts, observers and former officials said. Tillerson is due to meet with Russian officials on Wednesday, and is expected to meet with Putin and Lavrov.

“The demonstration of the administration’s willingness to use force has the potential to add some leverage to the diplomacy,” said Antony Blinken, a deputy to former Secretary of State John Kerry.

The U.S. strike – ordered less than three days after the gas attack – could make it clear to Russia that the United States will hold Moscow accountable for Assad, Blinken said.

Tillerson ought to be “very matter of fact” in his meetings, Blinken said, sending Russia a message that: “If you don’t rein him in, we will take further action.”

Tillerson said on Thursday that Russia had “failed in its responsibility” to remove Syria’s chemical weapons under a 2013 agreement, which he argued showed Russia was either complicit with the gas attacks or “simply incompetent.” Securing a Russian commitment on eliminating Assad’s chemical weapons is likely to be first on his agenda, said Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

RUSSIAN LEVERAGE WITH ASSAD

The talks will be a major test of Tillerson’s diplomatic skills. As a former chief executive at Exxon Mobil, he has experience doing business in Russia, but no background in the often public negotiations that international diplomacy requires.

It also is unclear if Trump, who has expressed skepticism about multilateral institutions such as the European Union and United Nations, will have patience for the protracted negotiations that a comprehensive deal on Syria would require.

Russia condemned the missile strike as illegal and Putin said it would harm U.S.-Russia ties. Moscow also said it would keep military channels of communication open with Washington, but would not exchange any information through them.

It was an unforeseen turn of events for Trump, who praised Putin repeatedly during last year’s election campaign and said he would like to work more closely with Russia to defeat Islamic State. Just over a week ago, top administration officials were signaling that removing Assad is no longer a U.S. priority.

But one senior official said it was significant that Russia suspended, and did not cancel, cooperation with the United States after the air strike. Nor did Lavrov cancel Tillerson’s visit to Moscow, suggesting Russia may be willing to tolerate the single strike. As of this weekend, the talks were still on.

“They’re going to try to draw a line around this incident,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia during the George W. Bush administration. “They are still not giving up on working with the Trump administration.”

The Trump administration also wants to keep the focus in Syria on defeating Islamic State rather than opening a conflict with Russia or Syria’s government.

Another U.S. official said one hope is that Moscow will see Tillerson’s visit and a discussion about how to cooperate to stop Assad’s use of banned weapons as a tacit acknowledgement of Russia’s great power status, one of Putin’s main ambitions.

“The strikes aren’t necessarily a bad thing for Russia,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Russia’s had a very hard time getting President Assad to come to the negotiating table in any kind of meaningful way.”

Now, Tabler said, the Russians can point to more U.S. strikes as the price of further intransigence by Assad.

(Editing by John Walcott, Bill Trott and James Dalgleish)

U.S. officials say Russian inaction enabled Syria chemical attack

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trump administration officials on Sunday blamed Russian inaction for enabling a deadly poison gas attack against Syrian civilians last week as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson prepared to explain to Moscow a U.S. retaliatory missile strike.

Tillerson said Syria was able to execute the attack, which killed scores of people, because Moscow had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons in Syria.

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Syria’s “sponsors,” Russia and Iran, were enabling President Bashar al-Assad’s “campaign of mass murder against his own civilians.”

But Tillerson, who is expected to visit Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian officials, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ program there was “no change” to the U.S. military posture toward Syria.

“I think the real failure here has been Russia’s failure to live up to its commitments under the chemical weapons agreements that were entered into in 2013,” Tillerson said.

“The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia’s part to achieve its commitment to the international community,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base after he blamed Assad for the chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” McMaster said the United States would take further action in Syria if necessary.

“We’re prepared to do more. In fact, we were prepared to do more two days ago,” McMaster said. “The president will make whatever decision he thinks is in the best interests of the American people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani said in a phone call that aggressive U.S. actions against Syria were not permissible and violated international law, the Kremlin said.

McMaster said Russian leaders were supporting “a murderous regime” and their actions would dictate the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

“Do they want it to be a relationship of competition and potential conflict,” McMaster said. “Or do they want it to be a relationship in which we can find areas of cooperation that are in our mutual interest?”

Tillerson stopped short of accusing Russia of direct involvement in planning or carrying out the attack, saying he had not seen “any hard evidence” to suggest Moscow was an accomplice to Assad.

But he said the United States expected Russia to take a tougher stance by rethinking its alliance with Assad because “every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and David Morgan; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Russia warns of serious consequences from U.S. strike in Syria

President Trump meeting with his National Security team and being briefed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford via secure video after a missile strike on Syria while inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that this image has been digitally edited for security purposes.

By Steve Holland, Andrew Osborn and Tom Perry

PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russia warned on Friday that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base could have “extremely serious” consequences, as President Donald Trump’s first major foray into a foreign conflict opened up a rift between Moscow and Washington.

The U.S. military launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross warships in the Mediterranean Sea that hit the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations of the Shayrat air base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons.

It was Trump’s biggest foreign policy decision since taking office in January and the kind of direct intervention in Syria’s six-year-old civil war that his predecessor Barack Obama avoided.

The American strikes were in reaction to what Washington says was a poison gas attack by the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad this week that killed at least 70 people in rebel-held territory.

The U.S. action catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground aiding its close ally Assad.

“We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious,” Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged that the U.S. strikes were one step away from clashing with Russia’s military.

Moscow said it had suspended communication with U.S. forces designed to stop planes colliding over Syria, where U.S. jets frequently bomb Islamic States militants. But senior U.S. military officials told Pentagon reporters that Russia has not suspended the military communications channel.

U.S. officials informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strikes, and avoided hitting Russian personnel.

Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin’s effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups.

Trump has frequently called for improved relations with Russia which were strained under Obama over Syria, Ukraine and other issues, but the U.S. president said action had to be taken against Assad.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically,” Trump said as he announced the attack on Thursday night from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,” he said, adding: “No child of God should ever suffer such horror.”

ASSAD ‘ON NOTICE’

A wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, for the strikes.

Assad has been “put on notice” by the U.S. action, Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council, terming it a “proportionate response to unspeakable acts.”

U.S. officials said the military intervention was a “one-off” intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not an expansion of the U.S. role in the Syrian war.

The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as to countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, that he is willing to use force.

Assad’s office said Damascus would respond by striking its enemies harder.

The Syrian government and Moscow denied Syrian forces were behind the gas attack but Western countries dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike.

The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people and called it “blatant aggression” which made the United States a partner of “terrorist groups” including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties on Friday backed Trump’s action but demanded he spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict and consult with Congress on any further action.

A Russian frigate carrying cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus Strait into the Mediterranean Sea, although there was no indication it was in response to the U.S. action.

Russia expects U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to explain Washington’s stance in light of the missile strikes

when he visits Moscow in the coming week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying.

Washington has long backed rebels fighting Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011.

The United States has conducted air strikes against Islamic State militants who control territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are on the ground assisting anti-Islamic State militias.

Russia joined the war on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in his favor. Although they support opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, Washington and Moscow say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State.

Tuesday’s attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago.

Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims.

The U.S. strikes cheered Assad’s enemies, after months when Western powers appeared to grow increasingly resigned to his staying in power. But opposition figures said an isolated assault was far from the decisive intervention they seek.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Lesley Wroughton, Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Megan Davies in New York and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff and Alistair Bell; Editing by Giles Elgood and James Dalgleish)

Russian authorities hunt metro bomber accomplices; several detained

People mourn next to a memorial site for the victims of a blast in St. Petersburg metro, at Tekhnologicheskiy institut metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

By Polina Nikolskaya

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) – Russian authorities detained several people in St Petersburg on Thursday after finding an explosive device in one residential building and said they were investigating suspected accomplices of the man behind this week’s deadly metro bombing.

Bomb disposal experts made the explosive device found at the apartment building safe after evacuating people living in flats on two stairwells.

“We were told: the house is mined, get out quickly,” one woman, who only gave her name as Tatiana and lives in the building, told Reuters.

Another resident, who gave his name only as Anatoly, said he had seen police detain four young men occupying an eighth floor apartment next to his own.

St Petersburg is still reeling after a bomb ripped through the city’s metro on Monday, killing 14 people and injuring 50.

The attack, which authorities say was carried out by a Kyrgyz-born Russian citizen, has put renewed focus on the large number of emigres from mostly Muslim central Asian states, who have moved to Russia to work.

Russia’s state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber’s background, said in a statement it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices.

It said it had identified several people of central Asian origin who had been in touch with Akbarzhon Jalilov, the main suspect. A search of the suspects’ homes had turned up objects that were important for the investigation, it said.

Russian news agency Interfax reported that investigators had detained several people suspected of being Jalilov’s accomplices.

It was unclear if those detained at the site of Thursday’s bomb scare were the suspected accomplices identified by the investigative committee.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Alexander Winning in Moscow; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Trump says chemical attack in Syria crossed many lines

A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

By Jeff Mason and Tom Perry

WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of going “beyond a red line” with a poison gas attack on civilians and said his attitude toward Syria and Assad had changed, but gave no indication of how he would respond.

Trump said the attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, “crosses many, many lines”, an allusion to his predecessor Barack Obama’s threat to topple Assad with air strikes if he used such weapons. His accusations against Assad put him directly at odds with Moscow, the Syrian’s president principal backer.

“I will tell you, what happened yesterday is unacceptable to me,” Trump told reporters at a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Wednesday.

“And I will tell you, it’s already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much,” though when asked at an earlier meeting whether he was formulating a new policy on Syria, Trump said: “You’ll see.”

Vice President Mike Pence, when asked whether it was time to renew the call for Assad to be ousted and safe zones be established, told Fox News: “But let me be clear, all options are on the table,” without elaborating.

U.S. officials rejected Russia’s assertion that Syrian rebels were to blame for the attack.

Trump’s comments, which came just a few days after Washington said it was no longer focused on making Assad leave power, suggested a clash between the Kremlin and Trump’s White House after initial signals of warmer ties. Trump did not mention Russia in his comments on Wednesday but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was time for Russia to think carefully about its support for Assad.

Pence said the time had come for Moscow to “keep the word that they made to see to the elimination of chemical weapons so that they no longer threaten the people in that country.”

Western countries, including the United States, blamed Assad’s armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria for more than four years.

U.S. intelligence officials, based on a preliminary assessment, said the deaths were most likely caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday. A senior State Department official said Washington had not yet ascertained it was sarin.

Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russian explanation was not credible. “We don’t believe it,” the official said.

COUNTER-RESOLUTION

The United States, Britain and France have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the attack; the Russian Foreign Ministry called it “unacceptable” and said it was based on “fake information”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would press its case blaming the rebels and Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Russia would veto the draft if Western nations went to a vote without further consultations, Interfax news agency reported.

Moscow has proposed its own draft, TASS news agency quoted a spokesman of Russia’s U.N. mission, Fyodor Strzhizhovsky, as saying on Wednesday.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, issued what appeared to be a threat of unilateral action if Security Council members could not agree.

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she told the council, without elaborating.

Trump described the attack as “horrible” and “unspeakable.” He faulted Obama for failing to carry through on his “red line” threat and when asked if he had responsibility to respond to the attack, said: “I now have responsibility”.

The new incident means Trump is faced with same dilemma that faced his predecessor: whether to openly challenge Moscow and risk deep involvement in a Middle East war by seeking to punish Assad for using banned weapons, or compromise and accept the Syrian leader remaining in power at the risk of looking weak.

While some rebels hailed Trump’s statement as an apparent shift in the U.S. position, others said it was too early to say whether the comments would result in a real change in policy.

Fares al-Bayoush, a Free Syrian Army commander, told Reuters: “Today’s statement contains a serious difference from the previous statements, and we expect positivity … from the American role.

Others who declined to be identified said they would wait and see.

Video uploaded to social media showed civilians sprawled on the ground, some in convulsions, others lifeless. Rescue workers hose down the limp bodies of small children, trying to wash away chemicals. People wail and pound on the chests of victims.

The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said one of its hospitals in Syria had treated patients “with symptoms – dilated pupils, muscle spasms, involuntary defecation – consistent with exposure to neuro-toxic agents such as sarin”. The World Health Organization also said the symptoms were consistent with exposure to a nerve agent.

“We’re talking about war crimes,” French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters in New York.

Labib Nahhas, chief of foreign relations at Ahrar al-Sham, one of the biggest rebel groups in western Syria, called the Russian statement factually wrong and one which contradicted witness accounts.

“This statement provides Assad with the required coverage and protection to continue his despicable slaughter of the Syrian people,” Nahhas told Reuters.

The incident is the first time U.S. intelligence officials have accused Assad of using sarin since 2013, when hundreds of people died in an attack on a Damascus suburb. At that time, Washington said Assad had crossed a “red line” set by then-President Obama.

Obama threatened an air campaign to topple Assad but called it off at the last minute when the Syrian leader agreed to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Moscow, a decision which Trump has long said proved Obama’s weakness.

SAME DILEMMA

The Western-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution condemns the attack and presses Syria to cooperate with international investigators. Russia has blocked seven resolutions to protect Assad’s government, most recently in February.

Trump’s response to a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow will be closely watched at home because of accusations by his political opponents that he is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election last year through computer hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The FBI and two congressional committees are investigating whether figures from the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.

Trump’s relationship with Russia has deteriorated since the presidential election campaign, when Trump praised Putin as a strong leader and vowed to improve relations between the two countries, including a more coordinated effort to defeat Islamic State in Syria.

But as Russia has grown more assertive, including interfering in European politics and deploying missiles in its western Kaliningrad region and a new ground-launched cruise missile near Volgograd in southern Russia – an apparent violation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – relations have cooled, U.S. officials have said.

The chemical attack in Idlib province, one of the last major strongholds of rebels, who have fought since 2011 to topple Assad, complicates diplomatic efforts to end a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of Syrians from their homes.

Over the past several months, Western countries, including the United States, had been quietly dropping their demands that Assad leave power in any deal to end the war, accepting that the rebels no longer had the capability to topple him by force.

The use of banned chemical weapons would make it harder for the international community to sign off on any peace deal that does not remove him. Britain and France on Wednesday renewed their call for Assad to leave power.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Polina Devitt in Moscow; Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Lesley Wroughton and Steve Holland in Washington; writing by Peter Graff, Philippa Fletcher and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall, Louise Ireland and Lisa Shumaker)

Blasts in St. Petersburg, Russia metro stations kill 10

An injured person stands outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) – At least 10 people were killed in explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg on Monday, Russian authorities said.

Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying one of the blasts was caused by a bomb filled with shrapnel.

President Vladimir Putin, who was in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, said the cause of the blasts was not yet clear and efforts were underway to find out. He said he was considering all possibilities including terrorism.

A Reuters witness saw eight ambulances near the Sennaya

Ploshchad metro station.

Video showed injured people lying bleeding on a platform, some being treated by emergency services. Others ran away from the platform amid clouds of smoke.

 

An injured person is helped by emergency services outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg.

An injured person is helped by emergency services outside Sennaya Ploshchad metro station, following explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

A huge whole was blasted in the side of one carriage with mangled metal wreckage strewn around the platform. Passengers were seen hammering at the windows of one closed carriage.

Authorities closed all St. Petersburg metro stations. The Moscow metro said it was taking unspecified additional security measures in case of an attack there.

Russia has been the target of attacks by Chechen militants in past years. Chechen rebel leaders have frequently threatened further attacks.

At least 38 people were killed in 2010 when two female suicide bombers detonated bombs on packed Moscow metro trains.

Over 330 people, half of them children, were killed in 2004 when police stormed a school in southern Russia after a hostage taking by islamist militants. In 2002, 120 hostages were killed when police stormed a Moscow theater to end another hostage taking.

Putin, as prime minister, launched a 1999 campaign to crush a separatist government in the Muslim southern region of Chechnya, and as president continued a hard line in suppressing rebellion.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia blocks access to Internet pages promoting new Moscow protest

FILE PHOTO: Riot police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Moscow, Russia March 26, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has blocked access to several Internet pages promoting what the authorities say is a planned illegal anti-government protest in or near Moscow’s Red Square on Sunday.

The planned demonstration would take place a year before a presidential election and a week after the biggest anti-government protests in years ended in hundreds of arrests, including that of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Sunday’s organizers describe themselves online as “young people and ordinary students from Moscow” and say they have nothing to do with Navalny, who is serving out a 15-day jail sentence for his role organizing the March 26 protests.

As of Friday afternoon, around 2,000 people had signed up online to attend the student protest, which in the authorities’ eyes is illegal because its organizers did not seek permission beforehand or agree the venue and timing with them.

A copy of what appeared to be an authentic letter from the prosecutor general’s office to the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, was leaked online on Friday asking for access to five Internet pages to be blocked, saying they amounted to calls for “mass disorder” and “extremist activity”.

Three of those five pages were blocked on Friday afternoon.

The prosecutor general’s office was not immediately available for comment, but its press service confirmed to the TASS news agency it had asked for access to several pages to be blocked because they were advocating illegal protests in Moscow and “in large cities” on April 2.

Roskomdadzor was not immediately available to comment.

President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to run for what would be a fourth term next year, spoke out against the protests on Thursday, saying that anyone who broke the law should be punished.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Jack Stubbs)