Syrian Debacle ‘Greatest Shame of the Entire Putin Regime,’ Satarov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 18 – Although many details are unknown or subject to intense dispute, Georgy Satarov says, it is already obvious that what took place in Syria on the night of February 7-8 represents “the greatest shame of the Putin regime for all of the 18 years it has been in power.”

            There are currently two “main questions” that Russians must face: how many victims were there among Russian citizens and what kind of status did these Russians have, according to the president of the INDEM Foundation. As everyone knows, there is an active dispute about the first (blog.newsru.com/article/18feb2018/pozor).

                Regarding the second, Satarov says, “there are two versions.” The first is that the Russian citizens involved were mercenaries, and the second is that they were members of some branch of the Russian special forces operating under cover as mercenaries.  In terms of shame, of course, there is no real difference.

            In neither case can the Russian government escape blame and in neither were these forces engaged in the supposed “struggle with terrorism” or providing “help to the fraternal Syrian people. In both cases, the authorities betrayed their own citizens and betrayed them in an unprecedented manner.”

            According to Satarov, the number of Russian citizens killed is certainly higher than any Russian official will say, possibly in “the hundreds” because if it were otherwise the US military would now have been so restrained in its reporting.  Its “silence,” he says, “is part of an informal collusion with Russian military and others … who assert that these were non-combatants.”

            In Russia meanwhile, Satarov continues, “some are silent but others are lying for an understandable reason. Truth could destabilize the situation not only in Russia but lead to a gigantic military catastrophe. Now a nervous Putin controls the nuclear button.” And how he might react if he were compelled to face the truth “is unknown even to the Most High.”

            “Therefore,” the Moscow analyst says, “you and I must pray for the silence of the one group and the lying of the other. The time for a trial of the liars and thieves has still not come. One must be patience.  And one would not want that a nuclear war interfere with this inevitable tribunal.”

            Satarov concludes with the following remark about shame: “This is not our shame. We did not select them, we did not authorize anyone to begin a war beyond the borders of Russia or send [mercenaries or troops] there.  This is the shame” of those who made those decisions, a shame that reflects their moral bankruptcy.”

            “Our shame,” the Moscow commentator says, is elsewhere: it is that those people are “still in power.”