Putin may have pushed too far by aiding Assad

No matter how hard Russia and its Syrian allies try to deny their involvement in the chemical weapons attack on Idlib, all the available intelligence shows they were directly responsible for committing a war crime that has claimed at least 70 lives and injured hundreds more.

The immediate insistence by Boris Johnson that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out the “barbaric attack” on its own people was based on the detailed intelligence briefing the Foreign Secretary received from senior MI6 officers yesterday morning as he prepared to fly to Brussels for a Syrian donors’ conference.

While categorical evidence is always hard to acquire in an active war zone like Syria, intelligence officials in both the US and Britain believe there is already sufficient material available to blame the atrocity directly on the Assad regime and its Russian protectors. A regime warplane was identified operating in the area at the time the attack took place.

Moreover, the aircraft was operating in air space controlled by the Russian military, which has been instrumental in turning the tide of the Syrian conflict in Mr Assad’s favour in recent months.

The nerve agent used in the attack was contained in a bomb dropped on rebel positions, another indication of regime involvement as the rebels do not have access to aircraft.

And the symptoms shown by the victims of the attack were consistent with those caused by a nerve agent like sarin.

It will be some weeks before international investigators can categorically attribute blame for the attack, as they need to conduct thorough examinations of the victims, as well as collecting soil samples that can be subjected to forensic examination.

The many difficulties investigators face trying to piece together the aftermath of a war crime of this nature is no doubt one of the reasons why the Assad regime believes it can still get away with carrying out such attacks.

By the time the truth is finally established, the international agenda will have moved on, and the likelihood of retaliatory action being taken will be diminished.

The Assad regime will also have drawn encouragement from former US president Barack Obama’s failure to follow through on his threat to launch military action after it carried out another chemical weapons attack on its own citizens on the outskirts of Damascus in 2013.

The other intriguing question is why Mr Putin allowed the Assad regime to carry out the attack in the first place.

The Russians have detailed knowledge of the regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles because the Russian military has spent the past 30 years helping the Syrians to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, it is the Russians that keep the Syrian warplanes flying, thanks to the regular supplies of aviation fuel that Moscow delivers to Damascus.

But Mr Putin has nevertheless taken a big gamble by supporting the Syrian regime’s attack on Idlib.

On Monday, he received a personal telephone call from Donald Trump, who offered his commiserations to the Russian president for the terrorist attack on the St Petersburg underground.

As Mr Trump has frequently indicated he wants to improve relations with the Kremlin, this presented Mr Putin with a good opportunity to improve on his fraught relationship with the White House.

Instead, the Russian leader has opted to support the Assad regime’s decision to intensify hostilities in Syria, which is no doubt Mr Putin’s way of testing the Trump administration’s mettle, to see whether it has the resolve to deal with countries accused of committing war crimes.

But Mr Putin may well find that, this time, he has overplayed his hand.

Mr Trump may have given out conflicting signals about the type of relationship he would like with the Kremlin.

However, hardened Cold War veterans such as Defence Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor General H R McMaster are unlikely to be taken in by the Russian leader’s duplicity.

‘The Russian leader has opted to support the Assad regime’s decision to intensify hostilities in Syria’