Washington: The United States on Monday suspended talks with Russia over the protracted conflict in Syria, accusing the Kremlin of joining with the Syrian air force in carrying out a brutal bombing campaign against the besieged city of Aleppo.
Anticipating the end of the talks after repeated warnings from US officials, President Vladimir Putin of Russia responded by withdrawing from a landmark arms control agreement that calls for each side to dispose of 34 tonnes of plutonium, a material used in nuclear weapons.
The developments signalled the further deterioration of relations between the United States and Russia, which are now bitterly at odds over Syria, Ukraine and other issues.
“Cooperation over Syria was the Obama administration’s last and best shot for arresting the downward spiral in the bilateral relationship with Russia,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a former White House expert on Russia who is vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The mistrust and hostility toward the United States by the Russian leadership is real and growing. It is going to be the driving force behind Russian external behaviour for many years to come.”
Just a month ago, it had appeared that Secretary of State John Kerry was on the verge of securing the long-sought cooperation of Russia on Syria through an agreement with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, that called for a reduction of violence, access to humanitarian aid and the joint targeting of terrorist groups.
But no sooner was the agreement announced than it began to fray — first because of the accidental bombing of Syrian troops by the US-led coalition and then because of what the US claimed was a deliberate bombing by Russian aircraft and Syrian helicopters of a humanitarian convoy headed to Aleppo.
In recent days, Russian and Syrian aircraft have carried out attacks, mainly in Aleppo, using bunker-busting bombs, incendiary munitions, cluster bombs, barrel bombs and thermobaric bombs, which scatter a cloud of explosive particles before detonating in devastating blasts, according to US intelligence officials. About 275,000 civilians are trapped in those areas, including an estimated 100,000 children. Hundreds of people in those areas have been killed in the past week, international aid groups say.
President Barack Obama’s administration was poised to halt the talks last week unless the Russians stopped the bombing and persuaded President Bashar Al Assad of Syria to do the same. But Kerry asked the White House for more time to continue his discussions.
Kerry talked a few times with Lavrov, and teams of US and Russian experts had what the State Department called “very robust discussions” throughout the weekend. At one point, a ceasefire lasting several days appeared to be under discussion. But by Monday it was clear that the gulf between Russia and the Western powers was as wide as ever.
“This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement issued on Monday. “The United States spared no effort in negotiating and attempting to implement an arrangement with Russia aimed at reducing violence, providing unhindered humanitarian access, and degrading terrorist organisations operating in Syria,” including fighters of Daesh and the Levant Conquest Front, an affiliate of Al Qaida formerly known as the Nusra Front.
“Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments,” the statement added. “Rather, Russia and the Syrian regime have chosen to pursue a military course, inconsistent with the cessation of hostilities, as demonstrated by their intensified attacks against civilian areas,” which US officials say have included hospitals.
Notably missing from the statement was any reference to steps the United States might take to strengthen the Syrian opposition by providing anti-aircraft weapons or imposing economic sanctions to punish Russian organisations that are helping the Syrian government.
The Obama administration has announced that it will consider “options and alternatives.” But with Obama reluctant to intervene in the escalating Syrian civil war or to risk an inadvertent confrontation with the Russian military, it is not clear how much interest the White House has in pursuing such options.
Kerry said in a meeting with Syrian civilians last month that he was one of three or four people in the administration who had previously argued for using force against the Al Assad government, and that he had lost the argument.
But Putin had a move of his own. Saying relations with the United States had deteriorated in a “radically changed environment,” he issued a decree suspending his country’s participation in an agreement on the disposal of plutonium that was concluded in 2000 as one of the framework disarmament deals of the early post-Cold War period.
The deal has no bearing on the number of nuclear weapons deployed by the US or Russia. Instead, it concerns the plutonium kept in storage in those countries that in theory could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Gary Samore, who oversaw the negotiations of the plutonium agreement for President Bill Clinton’s administration, said Putin’s response had more political than military significance.
“It is a political gesture that is part of the deterioration of relations, particularly after the collapse of the Syrian ceasefire agreement,” said Samore, now the executive director for research at the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. “We can both afford to get rid of 34 tonnes of plutonium without putting much of a dent in the plutonium that is available for military use.”
Still, a senior Obama administration official said the move was worrisome. Even with the growing tensions in US-Russian relations, the United States has argued that agreements regarding weapons of mass destruction should be sacrosanct because they are in both sides’ interest, the official said.
“The Kremlin has not bought that argument,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Putin’s decision to withdraw from the treaty may not have much practical effect beyond depriving each side of the opportunity to verify what the other is doing. The Russians had interpreted the treaty as requiring that the plutonium be irreversibly transformed into nonexplosive materials by being used in civilian nuclear power plants as mixed oxide fuel, or mox. Russia has signalled that it plans to press ahead with that undertaking despite Putin’s order.
But glitches and cost overruns at the mox plant near Aiken, South Carolina, delayed the US program. This year, Obama proposed cancelling the program in the 2017 budget and sending the plutonium for long-term storage at a nuclear waste site in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The State Department has said the move complies with the treaty, but the Russians have said it does not, as Putin reaffirmed on Monday.
At the United Nations, France is pushing the Security Council to adopt a toughly worded resolution that calls on the Syrian government to halt aerial bombardments and let in humanitarian aid.
But on Monday the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, ruled out any immediate prospect for a stop to the air strikes, saying that the Nusra Front had taken eastern Aleppo “hostage” and that Russian intervention had stopped its advance. “We’re trying to make sure black flags won’t fly over Damascus,” Churkin told reporters at a news conference.
