The Russian Ministry of Defence, evidently in anticipation of the Syrians deploying chemical weapons against civilians in Idlib, now accuses the Americans of bringing in to their base area in Syria aircraft armed with phosphorus munitions.

The Ministry goes on to say that these are banned by the Geneva Convention (Rossiiskaya gazeta, 9 September 2018). What it does not say is that they are banned for use against civilians. The Americans, should they seek to punish the Syrian military for using chemical weapons, would, however, be deploying such bombs against the Syrian armed forces; in which case they would not be in breach of the Geneva Convention. The Russian Ministry of Defence, on the other hand, was repeatedly in breach of said Convention when the Russian armed forces regularly used phosphorus bombs against civilians in both the Chechnya wars. Such manifest hypocrisy would, in the old days, be described as “The Pot Calling the Kettle Black.”