Russia is deliberately targeting civilians with air strikes in order to fuel the migrant crisis and further destabilize Europe, it has been claimed.

By hitting facilities such as bakeries and hospitals in air strikes, Russia is increasing the flow of migrants towards Turkey and ultimately Europe.

This, it was claimed, was undermining the EU as it grapples with a refugee crisis not seen in Europe since the Second World War.

Russian bombs detonate in a mountainous area of northern Syria, which the Russian military claimed were targeting ISIS jihadis. Moscow has been accused of deliberately fuelling the country's migrant crisis

A Russian fighter jet armed with laser guided bombs takes off from the Russian airbase in western Syria

Some 40,000 people have fled to the border with Turkey in recent days after Russian-backed regime advances in Aleppo intensified the conflict in the large city

Most recently, some 40,000 people have amassed on Turkey's border with northern Syria following a new Russian-backed regime advance to retake the city of Aleppo.

And new figures show the number of migrants to enter Europe so far this year is four times that of the same period last year.

Western officials and politicians told the FT this was triggered by Russia apparently deliberately targeting civilian facilities.

U.S. Senator John McCain, who is also the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, derided President Vladimir Putin's 'diplomacy in the service of military aggression'.

He told an annual security conference in Munich yesterday: 'He wants to exacerbate the refugee crisis and use it as a weapon to divide the transatlantic alliance and undermine the European project,' the paper reported.

McCain was speaking after a temporary ceasefire agreement was shored up between regime and moderate rebel forces.

However, the senior Republican senator lashed out at the deal, saying it would only empower Russian 'military aggression'.

'Let's be clear about what this agreement does: it permits the assault on Aleppo to continue for another week,' he said.

'It requires opposition groups to stop fighting, but it allows Russia to continue bombing terrorists - which it insists is everyone, even civilians.

'If Russia or the Assad regime violates this agreement, what are the consequences? I don't see any.

'Mr Putin is not interested in being our partner. He wants to shore up the Assad regime, he wants to establish Russia as a major power in the Middle East, he wants to use Syria as a live fire exercise for Russia's modernizing military.'

McCain added it was 'no accident' that Putin had chosen this moment for a deal.

U.S. Senator John McCain told the conference in Munich (pictured) that Russia is carrying out 'diplomacy in the service of military aggression'

'We’ve seen this movie before in Ukraine. Russia presses its advantage militarily, creates new facts on the ground, uses the denial and delivery of humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip, negotiates an agreement to lock in the spoils of war and then chooses when to resume fighting.

'This is diplomacy in the service of military aggression and it is working because we are letting it.'

Diplomats from a group of countries that have interests in Syria's five-year civil war, including the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, agreed on Friday to seek a temporary 'cessation of hostilities' within a week.

They also agreed to 'accelerate and expand' deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged Syrian communities beginning this week.

It remains unclear whether those commitments can be made to stick on the ground and whether deep differences regarding the truce and which groups would be eligible for it - between the U.S. and Russia among others - can be overcome.