Russia aims to prove chemical attack in Douma was 'fake'

• By ITV News correspondent Rupert Evelyn

“Russia never lies” said their ambassador in The Hague this week as he revealed to ITV News their plan to prove that the chemical attack in Douma was “staged” and “fake”.

Today they will use use the backdrop of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] to add weight to their story that it’s all a giant hoax.

Russia has been expressly asked to stick to process by the Director General of the OPCW and let their Fact Finding Mission interview witnesses first but Russia has chosen to ignore this request.

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Instead they are holding a briefing inside the OPCW with Syrians they’ve brought from Douma who, we are assured, will tell member states that they weren’t victims of a chemical attack.

Seven of these Syrians will point towards video footage taken shortly after the attack in which it looks as though they were seriously injured and tell the world that whatever it was, it wasn’t a chemical weapons attack.

Following the briefing at the OPCW the Syrians will then be paraded in front of the media to answer questions and we presume pour scorn on Western claims and eyewitness accounts from Syria that dozens of people were killed by the Assad regime in a chemical attack.

It promises to be political and humanitarian theatre in which lines will be deliberately blurred.