MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 271 employees of Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center, which is suspected by the US authorities of being responsible for producing chemical weapons.
“Once again we see how the sanctions are being used not as an instrument to achieve a real goal, but as a demonstration of a theatrical decisiveness, an effort to substitute or cancel the investigation by the very fact of punishment for an ostensible evidence of guilt,” Kosachev told the reporters.
Russia and Iran offered to launch an independent investigation into the incident but last week, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) turned down the proposal. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called this decision strange as the Russian-Iranian initiative did not stipulate anything other than conducting "an independent, impartial, transparent investigation" with experts visiting the site.