On the night of Sunday, Dec. 22, he set up camp on the sidewalk outside the residence of Russia’s ambassador to Washington on 16th Street, just blocks from the White House. He swore off eating until Russia agreed to stop bombing innocents in Idlib, where millions of Syrians are in crisis. A new Russian offensive has sent more than 250,000 people fleeing their homes with no idea where they can safely go.

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Hassoun set up signs calling for an end to the killing and calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a terrorist. He brought a small drum and beat it for three hours, until two representatives of the Russian Embassy tried to negotiate an end to his protest.

“They asked me what I want. I told them, ‘I want Russia to stop bombing in Idlib,’ ” Hassoun told me the first time I visited him there. “They told me they are not bombing in Idlib. I told them, ‘You are.’ I told them, ‘I want freedom for Syria.’ They told me, ‘There is no freedom for Syria.’”

The embassy officials told him it was terrorists who were bombing civilians in Idlib. Hassoun pointed out that terrorists don’t have planes. The officials then blamed the United States and told Hassoun to leave or they would call the police. He refused.

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“I told them I’m not going to leave. These are my rights. If you don’t have these rights in Russia, that’s your problem,” he said.

Officials from the D.C. police department, the Secret Service and the State Department all showed up over the course of Monday and Tuesday. Each of them asked Hassoun about his well-being and then let him continue his protest. The D.C. police checked on him every couple of hours.

When I visited Hassoun on day three of his hunger strike, Christmas Eve, he was too tired and weak to beat his drum. I asked him how he was holding up.

“I’m quite dizzy. I’m starving. But imagine how many people are starving right now in Syria,” he said. “I’m lucky that I have my sleeping bag, but they don’t have anything.”

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I asked him what he was trying to convey to the American people by staging his protest.

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“The message is there are more than 4 million people inside Idlib starving right now. They don’t have a place to live. … They must stop bombing civilians in Syria,” he said. “We don’t want to wait until Assad has killed more millions of people. … We don’t want to say ‘too late’ in the future because we are always saying ‘too late.’”

Hassoun also criticized the United Nations for not renewing a resolution that allows aid to flow to parts of Syria that are outside the control of the Assad regime. Moscow has led the effort to force the aid to go through Damascus.

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“The U.N. should support people, not block them from food, block them from help,” he said.

On Christmas Day, Hassoun’s birthday, a group of about 40 activists and friends came out to support him outside the Russian ambassador’s house. The group of men, women and children unfurled a huge Syrian flag and chanted:

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“Hey Putin, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

“Putin, Hitler are the same. The only difference is their name.”

Later that afternoon, Hassoun’s friends convinced him to end his hunger strike because of its effects on his health. On Facebook, he apologized to his countrymen in Idlib and promised to keep finding ways to “send a message to the killers of the Syrian people that we will not forget and will not stop reminding them of their crimes."

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The Russian ambassador’s Christmas was disturbed — but it’s a minuscule inconvenience in comparison with his government’s ongoing war crimes in Syria. A new law passed by Congress and signed by President Trump provides for sanctions on anyone who helps Assad slaughter innocent civilians. The Trump administration should use it to try to stop the carnage in Idlib now.

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The continuing war crimes in northern Syria will only send thousands more Syrians fleeing all over the world. They will surely continue to remind us of our moral failing to stand up against mass atrocities for many holiday seasons to come.