Further escalating Russia’s anti-US rhetoric, President Vladimir Putin called US Secretary of State John Kerry a liar, claiming he had denied al Qaeda was fighting with the Syrian opposition, even though he was aware of the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group. “He is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad,” Putin said Wednesday, as world leaders gathered in St. Petersburg for the G20 summit.
Putin also repeated that any use of military force against Syria without UN Security Council approval would be an act of aggression.
In his testimony to a Senate panel Tuesday, Kerry denied al Qaeda and “the bad guys” were a majority of the opposition, only 15-25 percent, including al-Nusra and many other groups that are “fighting each other, even now.”