Syria air strikes: What you don’t know
Christian Segers, Assistant Editor
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
If you don’t live under a rock, chances are that you already know of President Donald Trump’s missile attacks on the Syrian Shayrat air base this past Thursday. What you don’t know is that Russia has already responded.
On Thursday, April 6, Trump authorized the firing of 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles on the Syrian airfield and storage facilities believed to be responsible for the April 4 chemical weapons attacks on unarmed Syrian men, women and children. Trump’s Thursday night press conference clarified many of the details regarding the attack, dubbed as a “one-off” by a Pentagon spokesperson, including that the targets of the strike included ammunition storage units, 20 aircraft, fuel storage and aircraft runways. What you don’t know is that Russia is prepared to go to war over it.
Speaking to state-run media organizations on Monday morning, officials from the joint coalition of Russia, Iran and pro-Assad militias said, “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.”
The “red-lines” officials from the coalition are referring to, is international law regarding the sovereignty of states, which Russia believes the United States violated when its cruise missiles struck their intended targets in the Shayrat air base.
According to Syrian officials, at least seven soldiers were killed and nine wounded in Thursday’s strike carried out by both the USS Porter and the USS Ross.
According to Fox News, “U.S. officials told Fox News there were between 12 and 100 Russian military personnel present at the base when the missiles hit and said the U.S. ‘took pains’ to avoid hitting their barracks,” notifying Russia of the attacks 90 minutes prior to execution.
In a move of part defiance, part prior planning, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, sent the Russian warship, the Admiral Grigorovich, into the Mediterranean Sea, close to the aforementioned U.S. destroyers.
Despite President Trump’s adamancy that “Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children,” Russian leaders have decidedly warned against any further attacks on Syria, one of its closest allies.
Russian promises for escalation follows the 2013 pact chartered by then-President, Barrack Obama, in which Syria promised to dismantle any and all chemical weapons at its disposal. U.S. officials insist that measures of force were only taken as a direct response to Syria’s noncompliance with previous international laws and Russia’s decided lack of intervention in the wake of what President Trump referred to as “a slow and brutal death for so many.”
Signaling a major policy shift with countries that do not give up chemical weaponry, the president showed a rare glimmer of compassion as he took the podium on Thursday night, noting that, “Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should suffer such horror.”
As tensions between Russia and the United States continue to skyrocket, the world can only watch, wait and pray as democratic negotiations have come to a standstill with the two world powers flexing their military prowess.
