The US, Nato, Britain, France and Saudi Arabia have all expressed their concerns about Russian military strikes against “terrorist” targets in Syria.

Forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime claim that scores of civilians have died in areas occupied not by Isis, but by the self-styled Free Syrian Army and other insurrectionist militias.

Some of these objections to Russia’s intervention in the war in Syria can be dismissed for the hypocritical and duplicitous nonsense they are.

President Vladimir Putin and the Russian parliament decided to act in response to requests for aid from the internationally recognised government of Syria.

They had every right to do so under international law — unlike the US and its Western and Middle Eastern allies, which received no such invitation from Damascus.

While Assad and his beleaguered armed forces may be content that the US-led air campaign has so far targeted Isis bases, they have no illusions about the ultimate aim of Western intervention.

It is to replace Assad with a puppet who will comply with US and Western economic, military and diplomatic demands.

Steps towards this objective include arming and training the misnamed “moderate opposition” in Syria and extending and consolidating its occupation of “buffer” and “no-fly” zones cleared of both Isis and Syrian government forces.

This strategy is what motivates the latest attempts in Britain to participate openly in Nato operations there, ostensibly against Isis but ultimately in order to effect illegal regime change.

Unless and until the Syrian government requests direct British military intervention, it should be rejected out of hand inside the Westminster Parliament and beyond.

US objections that its military and diplomatic staff in Baghdad were given only one hour’s notice of the initial wave of Russian air strikes are yet further breathtaking examples of US arrogance.

How much notice has the US ever given anyone, with the possible exception of British subordinates, of its military actions across the Asian sub-continent and in the Middle East or Africa?

As for Saudi Arabian concerns, the murderous dictatorship in Riyadh demonstrates its contempt for human life every day, whether by beheading its own subjects at home or slaughtering civilians in neighbouring Yemen.

What really troubles Western powers and the Saudis, respectively, is that Russian targets may well include the Free Syrian Army and the non-Isis Islamist fundamentalists loosely assembled beneath its banner.

Indeed, anti-Russian propaganda has accused Putin’s warplanes of attacking only those forces and not Isis.

This is despite recent Western news agency reports of Isis activity in such targeted towns as Talbiseh (also a stronghold of al-Qaida affiliate the Nusra Front) and Rastan where, according to the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nine men and a boy were executed by Isis only last week for being gay.

The reality is that Isis and all other terrorist groups fighting to overthrow the Damascus regime are part of the problem, not the solution.

This is not to dismiss legitimate concerns about civilian deaths in Syria. The US and Nato already have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people on their hands, while Russia’s war in Chechnya indicated a similar disregard for civilian lives.

What the Syrian people desperately need now is peace and stability, both of which are preconditions for free elections.

Both also require an end to support for all terrorist forces in the country and unity with the Damascus government to crush Isis.