The Russia Conundrum

As with all the other conflicts he provokes around the world, Putin views Syria as a means to blackmail the West. The tension surrounding the confrontation and the threat it poses to global stability put the Americans on the defensive; they find themselves obliged to sit down at the negotiating table with Putin, on terms that are advantageous to him. What does Putin want from these negotiations? Ideally, he wants a return to the old days, when the world was divided into recognised spheres of influence, allowing Moscow and Washington to maintain autonomy of action in their sector of the globe, with a guarantee of non-interference in the other’s affairs. Most importantly, such an outcome would ensure the impunity of Putin and his inner circle to travel and spend their money anywhere in the world without constraints.

When Western countries dutifully came to the table after Russian interventions in Georgia, Syria and the Donbas, they assumed that Putin shared their desire to find solutions, to end wars that were – and still are – causing human misery and taking human lives. But the Kremlin’s overriding motive in talks with the US and the EU was to secure a better strategic position for itself, which frequently meant simply freezing the conflict. The confrontation in the Donbas, for instance, was carefully prolonged by Moscow as a means of undermining Ukraine’s independence. Putin pretended to the West that he wanted a diplomatic accord to satisfy all parties and persuaded the EU to include him in negotiations as a peacemaker, whereas, in reality, he was an instigator and a warmonger. The evidence of what all this was leading to is now plain for the world to see – and we are far from reaching the end of it.

The same is true in Syria. Putin has no interest in ending the fighting, because it is to his advantage to deepen the conflict and thereby secure for himself a role of global influence. By keeping Bashar al-Assad in power and tying down US troops on the ground, Putin has created the illusion that he holds the key to peace in the Middle East. But peace is not on his agenda. What he really wants is to boost his domestic approval ratings by publicly humiliating Washington and its allies in scenes that can be shown nightly on Russian television. At a time when the Russian people are suffering poverty, recession and isolation from the rest of the world, a foreign war in which Moscow is seen to be sticking it to the Western ‘enemy’ is a dog whistle call to the Great Russian sense of pride, which precludes criticism of the man who claims to be fighting for the honour of the Motherland.

A common thread in nearly all of Putin’s foreign ventures has been a determination to support authoritarian rulers – those who maintain their grip on power through the use of force against a dissatisfied population. In 2014, he tried with all his might to prevent the overthrow of the dictatorial, pro-Moscow Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych when a groundswell of popular discontent made his position untenable. In that case, Putin failed; but he did much better in Syria, where his resolute intervention rescued the murderous Bashar al-Assad from the vengeance of a population revolted by his record of oppression. In Belarus, too, Putin’s unwavering support has become the crutch on which the unpopular president, Alexander Lukashenko, has come to rely. In 2021, Lukashenko violated all international norms to detain a Western airliner overflying Belarus in order to arrest one of his many vocal critics. The Kremlin was alone in the international community in coming to his rescue, emboldening the Belarusian leadership to continue its crackdown on domestic dissent.