Putin and Assad joke that Trump should ‘visit Syria’
The dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime and his flight to Moscow is a “strategic political defeat” for Vladimir Putin which has “thrown the Kremlin into crisis”, a new think tank report has suggested.
And military bloggers in Russia are reportedly furious at what they see as their country’s humiliation, regarding it as a serious foreign policy failure, while Putin himself is anxious the same thing could end up happening to him, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War has pointed out.
Assad, the billionaire accused of brutally suppressing his people for decades, quit Damascus at the weekend and is now in the Russian capital.
His arrival in Russia is believed to have been sanctioned personally by Putin himself, highlighting the historic alliance between the two nations.
Russia had propped up Assad through military interventions and economic aid in a bid to cement its influence in the Middle East - something which now appears to be in jeopardy.
For Putin, the loss of a key ally in Syria unquestionably represents a significant geopolitical setback. Syria has served as a cornerstone of Russian regional strategy, granting access to the Mediterranean through the Tartus naval base and enabling Moscow to project power in the Middle East.
The collapse undermines years of investments in Assad’s regime, raising questions about Russia’s ability to maintain its strategic foothold in the region amidst its ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The ISW’s Russian Campaign Assessment – published on Sunday and authored by Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Davit Gasparyan, Grace Mappes, and George Barros – said: “The rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria – a regime that the Kremlin helped prop up since 2015 – is a strategic political defeat for Moscow and has thrown the Kremlin into a crisis as it seeks to retain its strategic military basing in Syria.”
Additionally the Russian President regards popular uprisings such as the one witnessed in recent days in the Arab nation with extreme concern – because he inevitably puts himself in a similar position, the report continued.
Vladimir Putin has several reasons for being unhappy at Assad’s fall, says the ISW report (Image: Getty)
It explained: “Russian President Vladimir Putin has long viewed the ‘colour revolutions’ that ushered in new democratic governments in former Soviet states as a threat to his own regime’s stability and security.
“Putin has also more widely opposed democratic movements to oust Kremlin-allied authoritarian rulers worldwide as he views these movements as hindering his efforts to create his envisioned multipolar world where Russia and Russia‘s key authoritarian allies and partners play a major role.
Russia secured an agreement on December 8 with unspecified Syrian opposition leaders guaranteeing the security of its military bases in Syria – but the longevity of such a deal was unclear given the extremely volatile situation there, the report continued.
It explained: “The loss of Russian bases in Syria will have major implications for Russia’s global military footprint and ability to operate in Africa.
Bashar al-Assad flew from Damascus to Moscow at the weekend (Image: Getty)
“Russia has leveraged its Tartus naval base to project power in the Mediterranean Sea, threaten NATO’s southern flank, and link its Black Sea assets to the Mediterranean Sea.”
ISW has collected “strong indicators” that Russia is preparing to evacuate its military assets from Syria and that Russian military basing is not secure, with satellite imagery collected on December 7 showing three Il-76 and one An-124 military transport aircraft at Russia‘s Khmeimim Air Base, possibly in order to evacuate “limited amounts of Russian military assets”.
The report said: “Russian ultranationalist milbloggers – many of whom fought in or covered the Syrian war – are upset about the fall of the Assad regime, criticising it as yet another failure of Russian foreign policy to exert and maintain influence in areas of strategic importance.
Some milbloggers have criticised the Kremlin for failing to realise that Assad’s military was degraded and the opposition groups in Syria would likely renew offensive operations to exploit Russia‘s “mistakes” in Syria, the ISW suggested.
A child sits on a tank after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime (Image: Getty)
One complained that Russian independent analysts and military correspondents had been warning about such an outcome for years.
The report stressed: “A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger bemoaned the impact on Russia‘s global image, claiming that Russia‘s reputation is now entirely dependent on the outcome of its war in Ukraine, which is ‘more important to Russia than anything now.’”
Syrian nationals who fled to the UK following the civil war said they planned to return home as they celebrated the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime.
A crowd of jubilant demonstrators gathered in Piccadilly Circus, central London, last night, chanting and waving Syrian flags.