(EDM) For a week following the April 7 chemical attack in Douma (a suburb or Damascus, Syria), Russia was high-strung with anxiety about the United States’ forthcoming punishment of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Moscow issued every kind of denial that a crime had actually been committed, but nobody expected that argument to dissuade Washington, or even Paris, from delivering a forceful military response (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, April 13). Indeed, denials of responsibility for a long series of botched “hybrid” operations—from the shoot-down of the MH17 flight over Donbas in summer 2014 to the attempted murder of “traitor” Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, UK, last month—have become a trademark feature of Russian diplomacy. US President Donald Trump dismissed the denials and held Russia responsible for supporting “animal Assad.” Consequently, the anxiety in Moscow centered on the possibility of strikes on Russian assets or advisors (Gazeta.ru, April 12). The limited character of the actual strike in the early hours of last Saturday, April 14 (local time), was greeted with a deep sigh of relief (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 14). […]
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