Interests and reputation

According to the British-based Syrian Observatory, after nearly a month of Russian air strikes in Syria, 600 people were killed, many of them innocent civilians, including children.

And the number can only go up, considering the increase in the intensity of air strikes.

Only 10 days ago, a hospital was bombed by a Russian warplane; scores of people were killed and injured.

A US State Department spokesman confirmed a few days ago that its “operational information” led it to believe that Russian warplanes had targeted the hospital.

“We have seen some information that would lead us to believe that a Russian military strike did hit a hospital,” the spokesman added.

But these figures do not represent all the casualties of the Russian military intervention in Syria.

More than 135,000 Syrians fled their homes after the Russian bombardments, seeking refuge even in foreign lands, thus adding to the already enormous refugee crisis facing Europe.

To top it all, Russia threatened to veto a UN resolution that was being prepared by France and the UK aiming to ban the deployment of barrel bombs in Syria, under the flimsy pretext that such a benign and humanitarian step would jeopardise the Vienna peace conference on Syria, held last week, which anyway turned out to be a fiasco.

Britain’s ambassador to the UN defended the draft resolution, saying: “I think it’s important to ensure that indiscriminate bombing is stopped because it kills so many people, it terrorises so many people and it is one of the causes of the flood of refugees and migrants out of Syria.”

The French ambassador to the UN echoed this sentiment when he described barrel bombs as “weapons of terror”, and “not defensive weapons”.

Not so, says Moscow.

In February 2014, a resolution on the issue was adopted by the UN Security Council, but not under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, as now being proposed, which would make it enforceable and allow for the imposition of sanctions against all sides that aid and abet the deployment of such indiscriminate weapons.

Meanwhile, Moscow said that it convinced Damascus to stop deploying barrel bombs but reality indicates that their use continues unabated.

Against this backdrop, Moscow needs to clarify its intentions on the Syrian conflict and make clear whether it is on the side of the Syrian people or not.

It is not only Russia’s long-term interests that are at stake, but also its image.

So far, Moscow’s reputation has been damaged severely, not only in most of the Arab world but also worldwide.

The annexation of Crimea last year was bad enough; to now embark on another adventurous policy is not exactly what the Russians need or deserve.