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The Russian Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Industry and Trade have presented their own report on chemical attacks in Syria following the UN-OPCW report, which accuses Damascus of using chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun on April 4, Sputnik reported.
The UN-OPCW report states the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad is allegedly responsible for the use of sarin in the Khan Shaykhun incident. The UN-OPCW report blamed Damascus for the Idlib chemical attack, claiming that a bomb with sarin has been dropped by the Syrian military aviation on Khan Shaykhun citing photo and video evidence from the site and positive sarin analysis as proof.
According to Moscow, a Syrian warplane was present in the area, but it was too far away from the site and couldn’t have dropped the bomb there due to the plane’s technical limitations. There are also no witness reports of a jet flying above Khan Shaykhun, a Russian Defense Ministry official has said, emphasizing that it’s impossible for a Syrian Su-22 to drop a bomb from 5 km distance.
“The report [by the OPCW-UN] noted that in 57 out of 247 cases of requests for medical assistance, the victims were taken to medical facilities even before the incident took place. The incident took place between 6:45 and 7:00 a.m. [4:45-7:00 GMT], according to the JIM [Joint Investigative Mechanism]. They [57 alleged victims] accessed health services even before that, and these facts are recorded and documented,” said the head of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control Department of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry Mikhail Ulyanov, adding that some of the victims requested medical assistance in a hospital located 78 miles away from Khan Shaykhun.
Judging from how the bomb crater looks, the ammunition that hit Khan Shaykhun must have exploded on contact, the Russian Defense Ministry said. As a Russian chemistry expert has noted, claims of unique characteristics of sarin, which was confirmed to be used in Idlib, are baseless. According to the photos of White Helmets’ volunteers, they touched the site with their bare hands. If it the site had traces of sarin, it would have proven fatal. One possible explanation for this is that the explosive charge was first blown up, forming a crater where White Helmets volunteers were filmed, and only later was the crater covered with sarin.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, that overall the UN-OPCW report on the chemical weapons’ use in Syria is biased, “unprofessional and amateur,” as the investigators had refused to visit the site of the alleged chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib province. The Russian ministry said that the probe had been conducted remotely.
“The investigation … was carried out remotely in New York and the Hague offices, as well as on the territory of one of the countries bordering Syria. This could not help but affect the quality of the investigation, which turned out to be extremely low.”
Experts had previously refused to visit the airbase, from where the chemical attack was allegedly conducted, according to the claims of Western countries explaining that visiting the airbase was “not a part of their mandate,” but still visited the base in October.
“But experts categorically refused to collect samples in order to detect sarin saying that they were not instructed to do so,” Ulyanov said.
“Actually, this is a scandal: this is an attempt to mislead the international community,” he told the reporters.
Khan Shaykhun incident that took place in Idlib province in Syria on April 4, 2017, resulting in 80 people dead and more than 200 injured. While the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, backed by the US, immediately blamed the Syrian government for using the chemical weapons against civilian population, Damascus has denied the allegations and reiterated that it does not possess any chemical weapons, the full destruction of which was confirmed by the OPCW.
Commenting on the accusations against the Syrian government, Russia has multiple times reiterated its position that all chemical weapons were taken out of Syria in mid-2014 with Washington’s assistance and called for a thorough probe into the Khan Shaykhun events.
The US has admitted that terrorist groups in Syria possess chemical weapons.
This contradicts the findings of Seymour Hersch, who states that a Syrian jet struck a building where a meeting of militants took place and which had chemicals stored in the basement. The Russians had provided the (not chemical) bomb, and had notified the US about it. https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article165905578/Trump-s-Red-Line.html
Good point , although Russia did say there was a jet in the area , but five km out of range .
The OPCW has officially morphed into Bellingcat. Why should the UN waste money on travel, chem/bio moon suits and expensive mass spectrometry analysis when they can make a determination based on social media and White Helmet headchopper’s accounts?
Just like how their media smeared with mud. Now OPCW is a joke of a legitimate of UN organization. I hope IAEA don’t do stuff like this.
IAEA also acts in the same way. All of them under jews control
There was a US chem expert that wrote pretty much the same thing, right after the attack. He said that for the attack to have been real was not possible. He sent his report to the WH and that took a lot of the wind out of the sails on this thing.
My question is this: is there anybody in charge of anything in DC, the UN, the Hague, that can handle truth anymore. Has it gone that far, that it is all about molding the world in a false and dangerous image of evolution. Shame on these people. Any means to an end huh? I wish well to all.
Exactly. How desperate they are that they bring an international UN agency no less to a political projection ? When there’s a similar cases later on i doubt the OPCW analysis is relevant anymore.
Well, whatever… I am not saying that the Russian assessment completely refutes all the points of the UN-OPCW report… but but the stinging question conspicuously remains unanswered: WHERE IS THE BOMB?!
Of course, they are all “in the know”, they know all the fabulous details and then some. Reportedly, they have meticulously documented just about everything, yet the bomb remains elusive. As if it has vanished into thin air! But they say that it was not a fragmentation bomb that would have been just blown apart into almost countless smithereens, which they would have been able to piece together anyway (or at least so they claim in other cases).
Yet the bomb, or its remains, are nowhere to be found. The single crucial piece of evidence is… conspicuously missing. Especially because it is supposed to be something that you would definitely not want to take home, right?
I think the investigation should focus on the most obvious and the most conspicuous circumstances and start from there.
” meticulously documented just about everything” (c) without even visiting the site of alleged attack?
Sarin or not Sarin is a bit irrelevant. Simplest explanation would be Assad did it. But this has little motive apart from saying we still got it, dont mess with us. Apart from that, it is suicide for him to actually use a chemical attack. Could it be saboteurs within? Could it be from the first responders? I guess, investigators need to personally interview eye witnesses, verify their competence and see the place.
Are you for real??? “Simplest explanation would be Assad did it”(c) ??? May we ask that you present your logic chain that leades to this revelation?