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On August 31, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia had provided the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) with a proof that Idlib militants are planning to stage a chemical weapons attack in northern Syria.
“I would still not talk about the risk of using chemical weapons, but about the risk of provocations using chemical weapons in order to blame the Syrian government afterward, because such a provocation is being prepared, there is no doubt. Both in the UN and in The Hague, where the headquarters of the OPCW is located, we submitted concrete facts that were obtained from different sources,” Lavrov said, according the Russian news outlet Sputnik.
Lavrov also revealed that Russia is currently working to establish a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the northern governorate of Idlib. At the same time, he stressed that the Damascus government has the right to clear the governorate from terrorist organizations, such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
“I would still not talk about the risk of using chemical weapons, but about the risk of provocations using chemical weapons in order to blame the Syrian government afterward, because such a provocation is being prepared, there is no doubt. Both in the UN and in The Hague, where the headquarters of the OPCW is located, we submitted concrete facts that were obtained from different sources,” Lavrov said.
During the last week, the Ministry of Defense of Russia warned several times that HTS and other radical groups are preparing to stage a chemical attack in northern Syria in order to provoke a strike of the U.S. and its allies on facilities of the Damascus government.
Despite of all of these warnings, the U.S. and its allies are still threatening the Damascus government and ignoring the threat of HTS, the former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, which controls most of Idlib.
