The war of words between the US and Russia escalated dramatically today, when in response to an accusation by Samantha Power, the US envoy to the UN, on Sunday that “What Russia is sponsoring and doing [in Syria] is not counter-terrorism, it is barbarism“, the Russian foreign ministry – through an FB post by its spokesperson Maria Zakharova – responded that there is “nothing more barbaric in modern history” than what the US has done in Iraq and Libya.