Russia criticizes Germany for funding White Helmets supportive of anti-Syria militants

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned Thursday that the material support, provided by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany to the pseudo-humanitarian "White Helmets" organization, could be used for funding terrorists.

Her comments came after the German Foreign Office announced that it had allocated 5 million euro in aid for the notorious organization.

"It remains unclear, for the German public as well, what part of those funds went to the support of cooperation between the pseudo-humanitarian crews with terrorists in the northeastern Syria," the Russian spokeswoman said.

Zakharova said it is easy to get lost in the accounting of Germany’s sponsorship of the White Helmet.

It becomes more and more difficult to draw a line between supporting humanitarian tasks and providing support for the terrorists, blatantly glorified by Berlin, the diplomat said.

She also said the German Foreign Office seeks to present the White Helmets to the Syrians as a symbol of hope.

"The German Foreign Ministry has, apparently, completely tossed away all hesitation and more and more acts as the primary promoter and sponsor of the White Helmets," she noted.

In July, Zakharova had said White Helmets members continued to collude with foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorists in Syria, and were involved in acts of looting and robbery under the guise of humanitarian activities.

“Western sponsors have not yet abandoned their support for the White Helmets and its affiliated outfits. We have repeatedly pointed to the fact that the humanitarian label of the group actually lies in plunder, extortion, robbery, intentional misinformation, false-flag chemical attacks, air and artillery strikes, and simply direct collusion with terrorism,” she said at the time.

Earlier this year, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin said Western intelligence services were sponsoring White Helmets and offering complete support to them to propagate fake news in a bid to incriminate Syrian government forces as a pretext for possible acts of aggression on army troops.

“The White Helmets is an organization financed by intelligence services overseas… It is fulfilling their objective within the framework of a propaganda campaign against the Syrian people, and the Syrian Arab Republic at large,” the high-ranking Russian official said.

The White Helmets group is known for its coordination with terror outfits in Syria to carry out staged chemical attacks aimed at falsely incriminating the Syrian government forces and inventing pretexts for possible acts of aggression on army troops by a United States-led military coalition present in Syria since roughly 2014.