The chemical brothers: Putin and Assad

This week the world witnessed yet another chemical attack in Syria. After horrendous footage from Khan Sheikhoun showed children suffocating from sarin gas and relatives crying over piles of dead bodies, Russia was forced to react. But while Washington used the attack as an excuse for missile strikes on a regime-held airbase in southern Syria, Moscow did the exact opposite - it used it as an excuse for more excuses. And the excuse was produced quickly: The ministry of defence announced that there was no chemical attack but that a rocket had hit a stockpile of "terrorists'" chemical weapons, which led to the release of the poisonous gas.

To many Russian journalists, this explanation sounded familiar. In 1999 during another "counterterrorism operation" (the one that brought Vladimir Putin to the presidency), a Russian rocket attack hit the central market in Chechnya's capital Grozny. Between 60 and 140 people died, hundreds were injured. The Russian authorities were quick to announce that the incident was caused by an explosion of a stockpile of weapons belonging to the "terrorists".

Eighteen years later the Kremlin is using the same excuses, but this time not to protect itself but its ally Bashar al-Assad. But who are these excuses for? The international community would hardly believe them, given how absurd they are: Even if the Syrian opposition had stockpiles of sarin gas or a similar nerve agent, an air strike couldn't have released the gas. The two sarin gas precursors are stored separately and are mixed only just before they are to be used. In other words, you would have the same success releasing sarin gas by bombing chemical stockpiles as you would making borscht soup by throwing a grenade into a vegetable market.