Russia ‘eroding world order,’ U.S. says
Hard-hitting comments come as two countries negotiate on how to end Syrian bloodshed
OXFORD, ENGLAND— U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter accused Russia on Wednesday of sowing seeds of global instability and questioned whether Moscow genuinely wants a viable ceasefire in Syria.
In a hard-hitting speech at Oxford University, Carter emphasized deep skepticism about Russian intentions in Syria, even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry prepared to fly to Geneva for more talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Their discussions last weekend, on the sidelines of an economic summit in China, failed to produce a nationwide ceasefire in Syria or a U.S.-Russian military co-operation agreement. Russia is a firm supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and their joint military operation has sometimes targeted the anti-Daesh rebels backed by the Obama administration. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Kerry and Lavrov would hold their next round of talks Thursday and Friday.
“Unfortunately so far, Russia, with its support for the Assad regime, has made the situation in Syria more dangerous, more prolonged and more violent. That has contributed to what President Obama this weekend called the ‘gaps of trust’ that exist between our two countries,” Carter said.
In last weekend’s talks, top diplomats from the U.S. and Russia, as well as U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, struggled to keep alive negotiations to end the bloodshed between U.S.backed rebels and Syria’s government. Obama expressed skepticism that an unlikely alliance between rivals would yield the breakthrough needed to end the civil war. Carter urged the Russians to work with the U.S., though he sounded less than optimistic.
Intense fighting between Syrian government troops and insurgents in Syria’s central Hama province dis- placed 100,000 people over eight days between late August and early September, the UN’s humanitarian agency reported Wednesday.
“Despite the progress that we made together in the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia’s actions in recent years — with its violations of Ukrainian and Georgian territorial integrity, its unprofessional behaviour in the air, in space, and in cyberspace, as well as its nuclear saber-rattling — all have demonstrated that Russia has clear ambition to erode the principled in- ternational order,” Carter said.
Carter accused Russia of being driven by “misguided ambition and misplaced fear.”
“Let me be clear. The United States does not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia,” Carter said.