Russia: U.S. Controlling an “International Terrorist Alliance”
September 29th, 2016Via: CBS:
Senior Russian officials blasted the United States on Thursday for what they said were Washington’s “invitations to use terrorism as a weapon against Russia.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and others were reacting to comments made the previous day by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, who suggested terrorists could use the chaotic battleground in Syria to plot and launch attacks “against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities.”
Kirby was explaining why the U.S. believes Moscow has an interest in halting the bloodshed in Syria’s more-than-five-year civil war, which has only escalated during the past week.
But Russian media quoted Ryabkov as saying his nation could not “interpret this as anything else apart from the current U.S. administration’s de facto support for terrorism,” according to the Reuters news agency.
“These thinly disguised invitations to use terrorism as a weapon against Russia show the political depths the current U.S. administration has stooped to in its approach to the Middle East and specifically to Syria,” Ryabkov said.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said later Thursday that Kirby’s statement amounted to “the most frank confession by the U.S. side so far that the whole ‘opposition’ ostensibly fighting a ‘civil war’ in Syria is a U.S.-controlled international terrorist alliance.”
“What makes Kirby’s statement particularly shocking is that the scale of direct U.S. influence on terrorists’ activity is global and reaches as far as Russia.”
