Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced on Saturday raids carried out by the US, France and the UK as aggression that will make the humanitarian crisis in Syria worse and called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Putin said that the strikes had a "destructive influence on the entire system of international relations."
"Without the sanction of the UN Security Council, in breach of the UN charter and the norms and principles of international law, an act of aggression was committed against a sovereign state," the Kremlin said earlier.
Pentagon officials said the attacks targeted the heart of Bashar Assad's programs to develop and produce chemical weapons.
The three countries launched the military strikes to punish Assad for an apparent chemical attack against civilians in Douma and to deter him from doing it again, US officials said.
The Russian military said the Western allies fired 103 cruise missiles including Tomahawk missiles at Syria but that Syrian air defense systems managed to intercept 71 of them.
"All together, 103 cruise missiles were deployed," senior military officer Sergei Rudskoi said at a briefing in Moscow. "Seventy-one cruise missiles were intercepted."
After the Western air strikes, Russia may consider supplying S-300 missile systems to Syria and other countries, Rudskoi said.
The situation in Damascus and other towns and cities in Syria is calm now, he added.
The chairman of the international affairs committee of Russia's upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, described the air strikes as a groundless attack on a sovereign government, Interfax said.
"It's also highly likely an attempt to create complications for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission which was just starting its work in Syria's Douma, or an attempt to completely derail it," Kosachev was quoted as saying.
Putin also reaffirmed Russia's view that a purported chemical attack in Douma that prompted the strike was fake. Putin added that Russian military experts who inspected Douma found no trace of the attack.
He criticized the US and its allies for launching the strike without waiting for inspectors from the international chemical weapons watchdog to visit the area.
