Hillary Clinton has, it seems, come to the end of her tether with Russia’s ongoing feeding of arms to Syria. It has been very hard to believe that transfers of weapons (or moreover helicopters as the latest accusation notes) are for as innocent purposes as the Kremlin has stated.  The ever-perspicacious Streetwise Professor argued two weeks ago that this claim was ‘incredibly mendacious even by Russian standards’.  Today Bloomberg describes it as ‘breathtaking in its cynicism’.   Arms deliveries may be the most obvious and indeed lethal, but they are not the only prong of Russian support for the regime, whose merciless attempts to quash the rebellion have won it accusations of perpetrating war crimes from Amnesty.  Reuters reported yesterday that Russian firms have been printing new banknotes for the Assad regime as it attempts to stave off growing fiscal deficit:

Four Damascus-based bankers told Reuters that new banknotes printed in Russia were circulating in trial amounts in the capital and Aleppo, the first such step since a popular revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.