By Vestnik Kavkaza
Last week, the coalition of the Syrian opposition and revolutionary forces urged the group of “Syria’s Friends” to attack facilities of the governmental Armed Forces devoted to President Bashar Assad. They demanded the “taking of certain measures to prevent Assad from using chemical weapons and missiles, i.e. to attack the facilities with drones,” RIA Novosti reports. Moreover, the opposition activists urged “Syria’s Friends” to establish a zone which would be free from the Syrian aviation flights at the northern and southern borders of the country. According to Assad’s opponents, these measures will enable hundred thousands of Syrian refugees to come back home, as there would be no threat of air attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia decided to provide Syria with help of a different kind – humanitarian support. “About 70,000 have been killed in Syria according to the UN, there are 4 million refugees, many have been injured, including children. There is a lack of basic necessities, medicines, the whole infrastructure of the country is being destroyed including houses, hospitals, schools,” Elena Agapov, deputy chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, says. “There is a policy of terror, it is aimed at intimidating people, and this policy has nothing to do with the humane treatment of the human life. Today in Syria not only are ancient churches and mosques being destroyed; the spirit of tolerance, religious harmony, the inter-religious balance which has been maintained for centuries are now being destroyed. This can have a serious impact on not only the entire Middle East, but also all of Europe. That is why the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society has decided to launch the raising of humanitarian aid for Syria.”
All the collected goods will be given to the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, John X and to the Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun, so that they would distribute it among their flocks, among the people who are in need of it. “Our Society intended to address Muscovites first of all, but all the regions of Russia responded, from Vladivostok to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The geography is really widespread: Yakutsk, Nizhny Novgorod, the Urals. We also received calls from Belarus and Ukraine. Many people in these countries have heard the pain of the Syrian people. Help was also offered to us from France and Finland. In fact, we received support from virtually all strata of Russian society,” Agapova thinks.
“This assistance is really coming at the right moment,” Riyad Haddad, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Syria to Russia, says. “The crisis has been going on in Syria for the last two years, and it is a result of the activities of criminal organizations which are supported from abroad, especially by the U.S., France and Great Britain, as you know, financial help is provided by Qatar and Turkey. We are certainly suffering deeply from the crisis that is happening in Syria, from those terrorist actions, from the destruction of mosques as well as churches, since it does not matter to the criminals whether you are a Muslim or a Christian. Christianity in Syria is a religion that has existed for centuries. The fact that the Russian people are helping us is not strange, since we share many, many years of friendship and cooperation.”
