Responding to Trump’s unexpected military attack on Syria in which 59 cruise missiles were launched (of which only 23 allegedly hit their target), Russian President Vladimir Putin “regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.”
The Kremlin spokesman insisted that “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons,” saying this had been “observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a special UN unit.”
The Russian president said he sees the US missile strikes as an attempt to distract attention from civilian casualties in Iraq, Peskov added.
“This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state,” Peskov said and added that the US has been ignoring the use of chemical weapons by terrorists and this is dramatically aggravating the situation, in Putin’s opinion.
