Russian official calls Amnesty International report on Syria "attempt to discredit Russia"

Russian Politics & Diplomacy December 24, 2015, 19:40

Valentina Matviyenko claims the documents contain "no concrete facts from reliable sources"

MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. The report of Amnesty International qualifying some of Russian airstrikes in Syria as 'war crimes’ is a provocation and an "attempt to discredit Russia", according to the speaker of the Russian Federation Council upper house of parliament.

The documents contained "no concrete facts from reliable sources," Valentina Matviyenko said on Thursday. "It is yet another attempt by interested persons to misinterpret the Russian air group’s operation in the anti-terrorist operation. It is an attempt to discredit Russia," she said.

"If such facts did exist, what a hullaballoo and scores of publications we would have seen," she said, noting that several attempts to discredit the Russian military operation in Syria had already "ended in a fiasco".

The speaker qualified the action of Russian pilots in Syria as "professional, correct and exact". "Of course, this excites certain envy and jealousy from others, who are doing this less efficiently," she noted.

Earlier, Amnesty International published a report alleging that Russian warplanes in Syria could have killed civilians and hit civilian facilities.

Russia’s Aerospace Force launched pinpoint strikes against the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra targets in Syria on September 30 after the Federation Council upper parliament house unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin’s request for the use of the armed forces against terrorists in Syria.

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