Russian Defense Ministry Questions Videos Of Syria Chemical Attack

The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday cast doubt on videos by the White Helmets showing the chemical attack in Syria.

The White Helmets, or the Syria Civil Defense, is a volunteer organization that operates in parts of rebel-controlled Syria. The White Helmets receive funding from the United States, the United Kingdom and other western governments.

In a statement on Facebook, the Russian Defense Ministry said that two weeks have passed after “the alleged use of chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun. However, two videos made by the White Helmets are the only ‘evidence’ of the chemical weapon use.”

Within 63 hours of reports about a chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in the Syrian province of Idlib which killed approximately 80 people including children, on April 4, US ships in the eastern Mediterranean sent 59 Tomahawk missiles aimed at the Shayrat air base from which, the US claims, the aircraft that carried out the attack took off.

However, the Russian Defense Ministry insists that evidence of the chemical attack is still lacking.

In its Tuesday statement Russian Defense Ministry said that, “the American, Britain, or European TV channels showed no ‘hero’ savior or injured person except for these two videos.”

The chemical weapon impact zone, where civilians were to be evacuated from, has not been determined yet, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he personally reviewed the intelligence on the Syrian regime’s chemical attack and that there is no doubt the regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself.

But the Russian Defense Ministry said that there are questions regarding the veracity of those White Helmet videos as, “Life in the town runs on its way. There are no requests for special medicaments, antidotes, decontaminants made by civilians or pseudo rescuers.

Additionally, the Russian Defense Ministry said, “Meanwhile, the number of unbiased experts, especially from western countries, asking these obvious questions increases every day.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said that specialists cannot explain how representatives of the White Helmets managed to work for such a long period of time and remain alive without gas-masks and special protection equipment.

“All doubts of professionals prove that the storm of accusations made by western politicians, who had ‘assigned the guilty’ without elementary inspection and objective investigation, is unsubstantiated,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

“Now it is clear that the ‘schemers’ have no plan for qualified investigation in Khan Sheikhoun as well as they had no one in Iran and Libya,” the statement concluded.