WASHINGTON, D.C. — If Russia decides to retaliate over the West’s April 14 air strikes on Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons plants, will Vladimir Putin’s wrath be directed at Ukraine instead of Syria? Or somewhere else?
The prospect of intensified fighting in the Donbas is one possibility being discussed if the Kremlin decides not to risk direct retaliation against the United States, which joined the United Kingdom and France in firing more than 100 missiles at three suspected chemical weapons locations in Syria. Assad is accused of using chemical weapons again in attacks on April 7 that killed at least 70 civilians.
If Moscow is unlikely to risk direct confrontation against the United States, could Kyiv be the next target for military escalation?
The Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, promised that Moscow would retaliate for the Western attack and, reflecting how Putin feels the action to be a humiliating slap in the face, Antonov said: “Insulting the president of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible.”
In the days leading up to the strike, Russia made fierce threats of retaliation if the trio of countries attacked. But so far, the Russians have only complained loudly.
The attack demonstrated the ineffectiveness against Western technology of the Russian air defense weapons supplied to Syria, potentially damaging Moscow’s arms sales.
Russia made unsubstantiated claims that 71 of the missiles had been intercepted. The Pentagon, however, said all had got through to their targets and that Syria’s Russian-manufactured air-defenses were only able to uselessly launch about 40 of their own missiles after the attack was over.
The Kremlin’s vows of revenge have not yet brought any abnormal upsurge in the exhausting stalemate fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas.
On the morning of April 16, Ukraine’s military reported one Ukrainian soldier killed and two more wounded in action overnight. However, no all-out offense is expected for now.
Nevertheless, according to a senior Ukrainian official, the Kremlin’s threat to the whole country still remains very real.
Speaking at the Kyiv Security Forum on April 13, the chairman of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, claimed that as many as 226,000 Russian troops were deployed along Ukrainian border, along with more 65,000 troops in occupied Donbas and Crimea.
All these forces, the official said, were being augmented for a “continental war.”
Later in the day, the deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Viktor Kononenko, said that according to the service’s intelligence, Putin’s entourage was aiming to lay the groundwork for an all-out invasion in Ukraine as soon as autumn.
But leaders in the United States and Russia appear to be ratcheting down the conflict.
On April 16, U.S. President Donald J. Trump wanted to lower tensions when he opposed new and tougher sanctions for Russia’s backing of Assad.
Trump’s statement undercut that of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki R. Haley, who announced on April 15 that the administration would place sanctions on Russian companies found to be assisting Syria’s chemical weapons program.
International outrage persists over Assad’s April 7 use of chemical weapons in Syria’s seven-year-old civil war. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds were injured after Syrian forces struck the town of Douma, which was then in rebel hands. Many of the victims were children, and the world was shocked by pictures of people choking and foaming at the mouth.
Days after the attack, the rebels withdrew from the town, and Syrian government and Russian forces moved in. These forced reportedly tried to destroy traces of the chemical attack, but valuable photographic and video evidence had already been gathered by local and international medical workers. The evidence publically available so far strongly suggests that Assad’s regime was responsible for the attack.
More than 500,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict, although the casualty count may be much higher since the United Nations stopped keeping an official tally in 2016.
Backing Assad, however, is only one of Putin’s many outrageous actions around the globe.
Besides dismembering Ukraine with the Kremlin’s four-year-old war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, Putin’s agents are blamed for using a military nerve agent on March 4 in an attempt to kill a former Russian spy and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
Britain rallied international support, which led to the expulsion of around 150 Russian diplomats from the United Kingdom, the United States and European Union countries, with the promise of more penalties to come.
Then in February, up to 200 Russian “mercenaries” were killed fighting alongside Syrian government soldiers during a disastrous attempt to capture an oil refinery within an area of Syria defended by U.S. and Kurdish troops fighting Islamic extremists.
The dead Russians were said to belong to a Russian mercenary group called “Wagner.”
The Kremlin tried to hush up the episode and was furious when Russian media eventually published the story. Moscow was forced to admit there had been a battle in which dozens had perished, but emphasized that the “Wagner” mercenary group they belonged to was unconnected to the Russian government.
In fact, the Wagner group is believed to operate on instructions from the Russian government.
“Most of the guys who died were just young conscripts who had poor training and didn’t know what they were facing,” said one U.S. Department of Defense source, speaking on condition of anonymity due to lack of authorization to speak publicly by name. “They’re the same as many of the Russian ‘volunteers’ fighting in Ukraine.”
The U.S. military was able to track the Russian and Syrian government fighters as they prepared to attack. He said “they never stood a chance” as aircraft called in by the Americans pummeled the attacking force, which was swiftly broken and retreated.
Meanwhile, Maksym Borodin, a journalist from the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, who first reported the disastrous battle in Syria, died this weekend after falling from his fifth-floor window.
Polonia Rumyantseva, editor of the Noviy Den newspaper where he worked, said she believes the fall was not an accident or suicide.
