In a speech, last month to the UN Security Council, Ambassador John Kelly, Political Affairs Adviser of the US Mission to the UN, countered Russian efforts to discredit the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and promote a narrative of denying the numerous chemical attacks the Assad regime has made against Syrian civilians.
According to Kelly disinformation is one of the oldest weapons of the Kremlin, and he said that Russia aims “to create and spread false narratives to divert the attention of others from its malign activities and violations of international law.”
No amount of lies and misdirection “can refute the evidence, facts, and technical analysis” he said. What’s important, according to the diplomat, is that the international community sees through, “Russian deception, and acts accordingly to hold those who use chemical weapons accountable for their actions.”
This month on the fourth of April Syrians remembered the victims of the 2017 Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack. For the people of Syria who survived through, and lost loved ones, in Assad’s terrifying chemical attacks, no amount of propaganda will cause them to forget the regime that visited such horrors upon them or the nations that support and cover for it. “We know what happened in Douma and elsewhere in Syria,” Kelly asserted in his speech, “and we will continue to strive to hold those responsible for these attacks accountable.”
