During its first month in office, the Biden administration did not reverse its predecessor's policy of keeping troops deployed in northeastern Syria to “keep the oil.” On Thursday, the White House approved airstrikes against the bases of Baghdad-allied militia groups in eastern Syria following a spate of attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq.
Moscow has evidence of US plans to keep forces deployed in Syria indefinitely, and plans to ask its US counterparts about this directly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
Commenting on Thursday night's US airstrikes against “Iranian-backed” militia bases in eastern Syria, the foreign minister said that the US side only provided the Russian military a few minutes' warning before carrying out the attacks.
Military concerns aside, the Russian diplomat also suggested that it's impossible to consider the strikes separately “from the fact that the US are 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,…
