ON SUNDAY NIGHT, BOTH THE HOST AND THE GUESTS on Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, the highest present on Kremlin propaganda TV, wore such glum and downcast expressions that you just’d suppose Vladimir Putin had canceled Christmas. But the topic was “the Syrian query”—the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, who had simply arrived in Moscow after his regime had quickly crumbled earlier than a insurgent onslaught. “For Russia, the Syria query is a painfully delicate one,” Solovyov, whose subdued demeanor was a hanging distinction to his common shouty bravado, stated in his opening monologue. “For one factor, our guys have shed blood for that nation.”
Having reassured his viewers that Russian personnel within the space had been secure and acknowledged that the Assad dynasty was out, Solovyov moved on to classes realized. Such as: “If the individuals don’t need to struggle for his or her nation, no outdoors forces might help them. If a nation needs freedom, if its individuals need to struggle for themselves, they are often supported. But to take accountability for a people who doesn’t need that accountability for itself, that will be a really unusual factor to do.” Notice how, on this upside-down model of occasions, “freedom” would imply preserving Assad’s murderous regime in place.
Solovyov additionally famous that whereas he had met and interviewed Assad and “personally discovered him very likable,” it was apparent that he merely couldn’t maintain issues below management the way in which his late father, Hafez al-Assad (who died in 2000), had achieved. And moreover, “What kind of military is that? It was one factor after we working with that military.” The apparent subtext: The ignominious defeat of Russia’s chief ally within the Middle East had nothing in any respect to do with the truth that Russia is at the moment slowed down in Ukraine and so was unable to lend him a hand.
The identical blame deflection was evident within the Kremlin-controlled print media: The day by day Vedomosti, as an example, instructed that Assad had develop into a sufferer of his personal vanity, refusing to barter with the opposition and “labeling everybody he thought of undesirable as terrorists.” The irony of Putin’s hacks mocking the behavior of labeling political opponents terrorists, a favourite Putin approach, is so thick you can reduce it with a knife and serve it in your borscht.
The propagandists additionally tried to discover a silver lining. Solovyov predicted that Israel would have extra hassle on its border with out Russia’s peacekeeping—and likewise that, whereas the West could also be “rejoicing” now, no person is aware of what states might disintegrate subsequent (possibly even in Europe!).
Meanwhile, the asylum granted Assad and his household in Moscow was spun as a reputational win: “Russia doesn’t abandon its personal, in contrast to the Americans,” noticed Solovyov. The identical theme was echoed by Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s everlasting consultant to worldwide organizations in Vienna.
Of course, you can say that Putin’s mass-murdering pal wished assist staying in energy in Damascus, not chilling out in Moscow. But we will’t all the time get what we wish, proper?
MEANWHILE, MOST OF THE RUSSIAN OPPOSITION was watching the collapse of the Assad regime with guarded optimism. “Of course these occasions are humiliating for Vladimir Putin, since Russia has positioned itself in recent times as an enormous participant, as Bashar Assad’s principal ally,” journalist Ilya Barabanov, now based mostly in Latvia, instructed the exiled TV station Dozhd. Barabanov identified that, humiliation apart, the potential lack of army bases in Syria might put a severe crimp in, if not an finish to, Russia’s ambitions to reestablish its affect in Africa. On a stream with Ukrainian journalist Natalya Vlashchenko, expatriate Russian political strategist Stanislav Belkovsky famous that late final 12 months, the Kremlin issued a speaking factors information for the tenth anniversary of Russia’s army presence in Syria “explaining why the Kremlin’s Syria marketing campaign was an amazing success.” Assad’s precipitous fall, Belkovsky stated, might be simply the kind of “black swan” occasion that would threaten Putin’s stability as effectively.
Russian political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov, at the moment a fellow at University College London, went even additional to describe the occasions in Syria as a “severe and big defeat” for the Putin regime—much less as a result of the Kremlin wants the army bases in Syria so badly than as a result of domestically, Kremlin propaganda had flogged Syria as an emblem of a resurgent Russia’s “international geopolitical affect.” For a big portion of the lots, Pastukhov stated, “Putin’s picture is that of a winner who is aware of no defeats”; the collapse of a Russia-backed regime in Syria might drastically dim that aura.
Pastukhov and interviewer Dmitry Yelovsky acknowledged the complexity of the occasions in Syria and the issue of discovering good guys within the present battle; however each agreed that the autumn of a brutally repressive authoritarian regime was a factor to cheer. And Pastukhov noticed extra hopeful symbolism in the long run of Assad’s rule: an instance of how shortly the forces upholding the facility of an authoritarian regime can fold when that regime is threatened. “If hassle begins” in Russia, he predicted, “the Federal Guard Service, the Russian National Guard, the Ministry of Defense—they’re all going to behave precisely like [Assad’s] elite models.”
One can all the time hope. And one might additionally add that in such a state of affairs, Putin might need rather more hassle than Assad discovering a refuge.
