Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

And so, in March 2011, Russia abstained from voting for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 instead of vetoing it. 14The resolution authorized member states to use “all necessary means” to protect civilians. It established a no-fly zone, which also permitted all necessary means to enforce its observance. In practice, that meant the UNSC—with Russia’s assent—had consented to the use of air power against the Libyan regime to protect the civilian population. Shortly after the resolution was passed, NATO intervened to provide military support to the rebels. Half a year later, Gaddafi, who had been on the run for months, was killed.

In March 2011, the outside world witnessed one of the few public disagreements between Vladimir Putin and his protégé Dmitry Medvedev. Shortly after UNSC Resolution 1973 passed, Putin described it as “deficient,” claiming it permitted interference in the internal affairs of other countries, resembling “a medieval summons to a crusade, when someone would call someone to go to a particular place and liberate something.” 15He also criticized NATO’s actions. Immediately after his statement, Medvedev gave a press conference in which he said, “Under no circumstance is it acceptable to use expressions that essentially lead to a clash of civilizations—such as ‘crusade’ and so on.” 16Some present-day Kremlinologists have argued that Medvedev’s Libya abstention persuaded Putin that he should not be allowed another term as president. They also say that Putin—who called the Libyan dictator’s death “barbaric”—has watched the video of Gaddafi’s bloody and humiliating end as a reminder of what can happen if opposition movements are not nipped in the bud. 17On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that Medvedev would have made the decision to abstain on the vote without first consulting with Putin. Putin’s conclusion from the Libyan debacle was that, as he said, “the West is not to be trusted—once they pocket your concession, they ignore you.” 18

In the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow, Russia’s economic interests were adversely affected and there was concern about future arms deals. But as the political situation in Libya deteriorated and two rival governments were established, new opportunities opened up. In 2017, Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar was in Moscow, seeking to secure military supplies and support for his attempts to assert control over all of Libya. He was feted aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s lone aircraft carrier. Russia now has ties with both Libyan governments—in Tripoli and Tobruk. It is also back in the arms supply and energy business in Libya, has signed an agreement to build two military bases there, and Rosneft has negotiated new energy contracts. Moreover, after the initial consternation over the fall of Mubarak and his replacement by the Islamist Morsi, the situation in Egypt has become much more favorable for Moscow. Morsi was ousted in 2013 by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and since then, Russian-Egyptian relations have considerably improved and arms, energy, and construction deals have been signed. In the aftermath of the mainly failed upheavals in the Arab world, the Kremlin has found new ways to increase its presence in the Middle East, nowhere more starkly than in Syria.

On September 30, 2015, with a mere one-hour warning to US military personnel, and to the surprise and shock of the United States and its allies, Putin ordered a squadron of Russian jets to deploy to the Hmeimim airbase near Latakia, home to those loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad. It was Russia’s first military foray outside the former Soviet borders since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Within a few days, some thirty Russian warplanes had begun to turn the tide of the four-year-old civil war in Assad’s favor. Even though this was a relatively small deployment, it represented a pivotal moment in Putin’s determination to reestablish Russia as a major player in the Middle East. 19Suddenly Russian planes were flying in the same airspace as those of the United States and its allies, who were battling Islamic State. Since the US-led coalition had much stricter rules about minimizing civilian casualties than did the Russians, Russia flew more sorties and hit more targets than did the coalition.

Russia’s partnership with Syria dates back to the Soviet times, when Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, had developed close ties with the Kremlin. Although the KGB considered him nothing less than “a petit-bourgeois chauvinist egomaniac,” he was a useful egomaniac and partner. 20The Assad family is part of the Shia Alawite minority that rules the Sunni-majority country. When the younger Assad succeeded his father, he made his first state visit as president to Moscow in 2005, and Putin received him warmly. At that point Syria had a $13.5 billion debt to Russia. The two leaders signed a “joint declaration on friendship and cooperation,” and Russia agreed to write off nearly 75 percent of Syria’s debt. From 2007 to 2010, the value of Russian arms deals with Syria more than doubled to $4.7 billion. 21Syria was a reliable client for Russian arms and one of the few countries in the region over whom Russia had some influence. Moreover, Russia’s only naval base outside the former Soviet Union and Russia’s only warm-water port is at Tartus, on the Mediterranean in northern Syria. In 2011, it was rather dilapidated with a skeleton staff.

Syria’s civil war had begun in 2011. Several opposition groups were fighting Assad’s forces, ranging from the secular Free Syrian Army to the more religious Jabhat al-Nusra, which eventually expressed loyalty to Al-Qaeda. The United States, backed by a coalition of Arab states, spearheaded military intervention to assist the non-IS rebels. In 2012, Obama had warned the Syrian leader not to cross the “red line” on using chemical weapons against his own people, as his father had done in Hama in 1982. But in August 2013 came the news of a sarin gas attack in a rebel suburb of Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the “purported” gas attack could have been “staged by the rebels.” 22The Obama administration debated conducting air strikes against the Assad regime but ultimately demurred.

Putin seized the opportunity provided by the apparent disappearance of the “red line” to publish an op-ed in an unusual platform for him—the New York Times —warning that a US military strike against Syria would “unleash a new wave of terrorism” and “could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.” He added, echoing his 2007 Munich speech, “Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.’” 23And then, appropriating an offhand remark previously made by John Kerry, he proposed a joint US-Russia effort to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, which worked—until Syria again used chemical weapons on its population in April 2017 and Russia once again vetoed a UNSC resolution condemning it. The pattern repeated itself in 2018, when the Assad government unleashed chemical weapons in another suburb of Damascus.

Yet back in the summer of 2015, it appeared that Assad’s forces were in retreat, despite their support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, after a war that had claimed as many as half a million lives. Millions of refugees had fled Syria, straining Europe’s ability to absorb them. By that time, Russia made the decision to intervene to ensure that Assad stayed in power. Putin had been shunned by the West after the annexation of Crimea, and the Syrian Civil War provided a welcome opportunity for Russia to reassert itself and to force the West to recognize Russia’s role as a great power. The Russian military operation in Syria is not only the biggest combat mission of Russia’s armed forces abroad since the Afghan War. It also represents a new kind of expeditionary warfare. Russia is fighting in a country with which it has no common border, and this is predominantly an air war. 24It has allowed the Russian military to train its forces and test under combat conditions the capabilities of troops and of new equipment.