Natalya Narochnitskaya, President of the Paris Institute of Democracy and Cooperation and a member of the Council of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS), said that US President Barack Obama’s decision to postpone Congressional votes on the Syrian operation helped save his image. Russia’s offer to put Syrian chemical weapons under international control has provided Obama with a solution.
Narochnitskaya said that authoritarian regimes were powers that maintained a religious, political and ideological balance. She believes that attacks on Syria would have caused a collapse and backfire on Europe with a stream of refugees.
Yelena Agapova, deputy head of the IOPS, emphasized that 6.8 million people in Syria were in dire need of humanitarian aid, over 4 million were homeless, 1.94 million had become refugees. She noted that they had sent 6 portions of aid in March 2013. The highest demand in Damascus is for ambulances, because most of them have been destroyed by militants. There is also high demand for children’s food. Hospitals in Aleppo and Homs need help. She quoted Patriarch Kirill saying yesterday that the war in Syria had become a Golgotha.
Sergey Baydakov, head of the Moscow office of the IOPS, said that a quarter of the population was internally displaced and needed food, hygiene and medicine. He noted that Russia collected 70 tons of humanitarian aid for Syria in the spring.
Oleg Fomin, co-chair of the Russian Committee for Solidarity with Syria and a member of the IOPS Council, said that he had returned from Syria three weeks earlier and had become confident that the people there were holding firmly. State flags and portraits of Assad were seen everywhere in Damascus. People considered him a fighter against terrorism. Fomin expressed optimism and believes that the people there will win the war. He added that there had been a strong sense of solidarity on Army Day on August 1.
