Analysis: Putin used the same false justification for brutal bombings in Syria, in the glare of western media
When a Russian spokesperson took to a podium in Moscow on Wednesday and warned of a “biological weapons programme” inThe anti-Assad opposition groups that still held northern Syria had heard it all before. From 2015, whentook a prominent stake in the conflict, and throughout the gruesome years that followed, claims that they, instead of the Assad regime, had used chemical weapons were a ready-made slur that put them on notice of an imminent assault.
It was a very different story in Syria, where each claim of chemical weapons use by rebels was received with credulity in parts of the UK andand there was little interest in exposing Moscow’s lies. Winning the war of misinformation was a Russian success in Syria, in a theatre that wasn’t short of wins for a military with no one apart from outgunned rebels and jihadists willing to stand in its way.,” a former senior Nato officer told the Guardian.
Compared with the quagmire it has found in Ukraine and the blistering international reaction to its invasion, Syria was a relatively low-cost intervention for Moscow. Its pilots ran bombing runs without serious fear of being shot from the skies, its heavy weaponry had the run of towns and cities and its disinformation machine won at a canter.
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