According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the videos, allegedly showing “Russia’s shelling and executions,” are fakes, filmed by Aleppo’s militants.
Free Syrian Army fighters fire an anti-aircraft weapon in a rebel-held area of Aleppo (Photo: Reuters / Abdalrhman Ismail)
The videos, allegedly showing “Russia’s shelling and executions” and other similar footage are fakes, which were filmed by militants themselves, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Tuesday.
“All of the statements by high-ranked Western officials, which cite so-called ‘reports by the activists’, as well as ‘flicks’, showing alleged ‘Russian bombardments’, ‘executions’ and other stuff are staged videos, produced by special film crews formed by militants,” Konashenkov said.
He also noted that “it remains a question, why some media outlets were so eager to use them without checking.”
“We have some advice for them – don’t ever fall for terrorist propaganda,” Konashenkov added.
The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry also noted that claims of some Western media, according to which some 250,000 civilians were trapped in the eastern part of Aleppo city and endangered by the Syrian Army’s offensive on militants, are untrue.
“The Syrian troops’ operation to liberate the eastern parts of Aleppo is successful and humane in every sense in regard to civilians,” he said. “All the dramatized screams, allegedly in defense of ‘250,000’ Aleppo civilians, who were ‘left under siege’, mainly on the part of certain representatives of the British and French leadership, are no more than just empty Russophobic rhetoric.”
As Konashenkov said, around 100,000 people were used by militants as human shields in eastern Aleppo. Now, all these people are out of harm’s way.
“At the very first opportunity, they left that enclave and moved to the Syrian government-controlled districts for safety, real aid and food,” the Major General noted.
He also added that with the most part of areas of eastern Aleppo liberated now, more facts about shocking conditions, which were created by militants for civilians, are being revealed.
“The inspections carried out by Russian mine clearance specialists in eastern Aleppo didn’t reveal a single school or hospital that had been functioning for its true purposes under the terrorists. All of them were used as command centers, Sharia courts, terrorist rallying points, ammunition depots and underground production centers for manufacturing homemade rockets,” Konashenkov said.
The spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry also pointed out that “no human rights activists, representatives of the ‘opposition’ or nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, like the White Helmets, have been found in eastern Aleppo.”
“According to civilians, there was only hunger and indiscriminate terror by militants for any attempts to express dissatisfaction or leave the enclave,” he said.
Konashenkov also expressed regret that calls of Russia on Western states and humanitarian groups to provide humanitarian assistance to residents, rescued from the eastern part of Aleppo “remained unanswered.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told the UN Security Council that the fighting in eastern Aleppo has stopped and the Syrian Army has regained control over the territory. The statement was made during the meeting in New York.
“The latest information that we have received during the past hour or so is that military operations in eastern Aleppo have concluded,” Churkin said. “So, there is no issue of any ceasefire or special humanitarian operations. The Syrian government has regained control of the eastern Aleppo, so the stage of practical humanitarian actions begins.”
According to Churkin, the militants, who have been holed up in eastern Aleppo for years, are scheduled to leave the city “within hours.”
“The counter-terrorist operation in Aleppo will be completed within a few hours. All the militants along with their families and the wounded are now withdrawing through the agreed corridors in the directions they themselves have chosen, including in the direction of Idlib,” the Russian envoy said.
Churkin also added that the withdrawal of militants will put the city under the control of the Syrian government and there will not be a need for eastern Aleppo residents to leave their homes.
However, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the Syrian government, and its allied Russia and Iran to “urgently allow the remaining civilians to escape” Aleppo and facilitate humanitarian aid access to the city.
At the same time, on Tuesday, the US and its allies, who have been supporting the so-called ‘moderate’ opposition in Aleppo, called the liberation of the city a “dark day.”
US envoy Samantha Power said that “the Assad regime and Russia appeared dead set on seizing every last square inch of Aleppo by force no matter how many innocent bodies piled up in their wake.”
British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft echoed her statement and added that “this is a dark day for the people of Aleppo. Surely, the darkest of the past five years. Assad’s forces, propped up by Russia and Iran, have once again redefined horror. They’ve gone from siege to slaughter.”
Russia can say whatever it wants, the Western media will not believe it on principle. It’s like telling a kid to do something and it will do the exact opposite out of spite. Russia does have a major issue of reliability in the West in regards to anything it says. In some parts well deserved. That still doesn’t mean that everything that gets said by Russia is wrong though.
Well the Western media is anti Russia,so yeah they will keep repeating the lies about Syria and Russia.If Russia says that the sky is blue probably the Western media will say that it is not true.
And with the amount of chemtrails they will be right.
No, they are not like children, they are like adult criminals. And they do not do it out of spite, they do it out of malevolence.
But not all journalists are the same; here is how Eva Bartlett lectures some of her “Western colleagues”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebE3GJfGhfA&t=837
Every media have their viewers. No one wants to find out that they were wrong all along. So the outlets don’t want to upset them and lose viewer. That business is based on that. I monitored it over the Fox News then realised that most of the outlets are like that.
There are more lies than truths in the media, it is specifically designed to keep us confused and uninformed.