In Maroupol, in Mykolav and other cities of Ukraine subjected to the bombing of the Russian army, the previous tragic of the ALEP headquarters in 2016 is often invoked to describe the “nightmare” or even “the hell “that the civilian populations donate. The images of the cellist playing in the middle of the ruins of Kharkiv, in testimony of resistance against barbarism, recall those of the improvising pianist in 2015 at the ravaged heart of Yarmouk, in the suburbs of Damascus.
In Ukraine today as in Syria then, the destruction by Russia of civil infrastructures, schools, shelters or hospitals, participates in a decision at the highest level, aimed at terrorizing the populations and to leave them alternatively that between submission and exodus.
Flags and mercenaries
The opponents of Bashar al-Assad now brand the Ukrainian flag alongside theirs, where the three stars of Syrian independence defy the two stars of the Baas party, in power in Damascus since 1963. This was particularly the case, On March 15, during the demonstrations marking the anniversary of the uprising, initially peaceful, launched in 2011 against the Syrian dictatorship. A doctor of Idlib then recommended to the Ukrainians to “strengthen your hospitals with blocks of cement, because the enemy Putin does not distinguish between civilians, wounded and fighters”.
The messages in the support gatherings to the Syrian revolution, on the spot and abroad, insist on active solidarity with the Ukrainian people, encouraged to “do not give up” or his land, nor his cause, because ” From Syria to Ukraine, the enemy is the same “.
Assad, who had received the Russian Minister of Defense shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, naturally brought it to that unconditional support. He even mobilized his army and his political police to organize the recruitment of mercenaries dedicated to support the Russian forces in Ukraine.
As of March 11, Putin approved the mobilization of some 16,000 “volunteers” from the Middle East. This estimate corresponds to the candidatures used in Syria by the paramilitary of the Wagner group and their local partners, the number of potential recruits being twice as superior, both the prospect of a balance of two to three hundred monthly dollars became attractive. But the commitment can be explicitly ideological, as in the case of Chief Militian Nabel Al-Abdallah, who committed to “give a lesson to the Ukrainians”, and this “as soon as my president Assad and my president Putin me the order “.
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