DAMASCUS (Sputnik) – Moscow has evidence of U.S. plans to keep troops deployed in Syria indefinitely, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
"We have recently received different information from various sources. We cannot confirm it for now, and want to ask the Americans about this directly. Supposedly, they are making the decision to never leave Syria, even to the point of destroying the country,” Lavrov said, speaking to reporters at a press conference alongside his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Hanif Atmar on Friday.
Commenting on Thursday night’s U.S. airstrikes, the foreign minister said that the U.S. side only provided the Russian military a few minutes’ warning before carrying out the attacks.
"Our military was warned four or five minutes ahead of time. Of course, even if we are talking about deconfliction, as is customary in ties between Russian and U.S. military personnel, this is nothing. This was a kind of notification when the strike was already being carried out,” Lavrov said.
The Russian diplomat also suggested that it’s impossible to consider the strikes separately "from the fact that the U.S. is present on Syrian territory illegally, in violation of all norms of international law, including Security Council Resolutions on reconciliation in the Syrian Arab Republic.”
Lavrov went on to blast Washington over its efforts to pressure other countries to prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria, and efforts to obstruct reconstruction efforts.
"They continue to play the separatism card. They continue to block, using their levers of pressure on other states, any supply even of humanitarian aid, not to mention equipment and materials necessary to restoring the economy in the territories controlled by the government, and in every way possible force their allies to invest in territories outside Damascus’s control,” he said. "At the same time, they illegally exploit Syria’s hydrocarbon resources.”