MOSCOW, Russia — Russia’s international minister on Thursday stated he was “skeptical” about a UN report accusing the Syrian regime of committing crimes against humanity throughout the siege of Eastern Ghouta.
The report revealed Wednesday stated forces loyal to the federal government had intentionally starved civilians throughout the siege between February and April, amongst different crimes.
“We are in principle very skeptical towards the methods of this sort of work, whether it comes to war crimes or the use of chemical weapons,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated at a press convention in Moscow with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
When questioned by journalists, Lavrov confirmed he had not seen the report.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks in Moscow on April 2, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / Yuri KADOBNOV)
He stated it was “based on data obtained through social networks, video that was filmed by witnesses,” slightly than being put collectively on the bottom.
The five-year siege, on the outskirts of the capital, resulted in April when Damascus regained management of the insurgent enclave.
As pro-government forces dramatically escalated their marketing campaign to recapture the besieged enclave, they used ways that had been “largely unlawful in nature,” the UN-commissioned report stated.
The ways, it stated, “aimed at punishing the inhabitants of eastern Ghouta and forcing the population, collectively, to surrender or starve.”
Russia has been concerned in Syria’s civil warfare since September 2015. Its army help of the regime modified the course of the warfare, permitting authorities troops to retake greater than half the nation from rebels and the Islamic State group.
A Syrian civil protection member carries an injured little one rescued from between the rubble of buildings after a authorities bombing within the rebel-held city of Hammuriyeh, within the besieged Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on February 19, 2018. (AFP Photo/Abdulmo Eassa)
More than 350,000 folks have been killed in Syria’s warfare because it began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.