Next claim by Putin: Sun goes round Earth

In a recent op-ed piece in a newspaper supplement in The Telegraph that details the news in Russia, my professor at both my BA and MA levels, Richard Sakwa, claimed that Russia had hold of a better understanding of the situation in Syria than the West.  Well, the Kremlin has truly smashed that idea now, even if it held water before.  Like North Korea and China, the smaller power is dictating terms to the larger one.

The United Nations weapons inspectors report did not apportion blame to anyone for the chemical gas attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, but they did include the trajectories at which the missiles landed in the buildings.  Human Rights Watch have traced these trajectories back to a government-controlled Republican Guard army base.  Russia which had not anticipated this from what they had expected to be unashamedly bland has spluttered more than a Tea Party member at the mere mention of Barack Obama.  Sergei Ryabkov, Russian deputy foreign minister, denounced the report as ‘one-sided’ and ‘distorted’, criticising the inspectors for not checking ‘suspected’ rebel gas attacks (carefully omitting that Russia blocked access for weapons inspectors at the time these events occurred).  He said they had evidence that the rebels carried out the attack. Who was this impartial source that had more neutrality than the United Nations – why, the Assad government!  Completely laughable and yet, as David Blair of The Telegraph argues, Russia has gone so far to the dark side in backing Assad that to backtrack would be very humiliating – hence this wilful blindness.  They will not force Assad to give up his chemical weapons if he obfuscates just as they could not restrain his use of chemical weapons like they promised he would.  Nor will they force him to the negotiating table given that he sees the civil war turning his way.  But this brass neck from Russia will not buckle as the defence experts Jane’s say that now more than half the opposition are jihadists, to whom compromise is just as alien as it is to Assad.  The West may soon end up tacitly backing Assad, distasteful as that is, because they waited too long to get involved.