Putin’s high-stakes gambit in Syria has paid off – for Moscow

Vladimir Putin’s dramatic decision to cut his military intervention in Syria has flatfooted everyone from the White House to Bashar al-Assad, and yielded predictably cynical reaction. “It’s a pretty brilliant tactical move,”says the independent military analyst Alexander Golts. Putin has “reaped a positive return” from his intervention, according to the former US assistant secretary of state PJ Crowley. But there is a more nuanced view. Putin is essentially telling Assad that, five years after the uprising started, he must take the Geneva talks seriously and finally compromise. The Syrian foreign minister’s recent press conference statement that Assad’s future cannot be discussed in Geneva will have irritated Putin. It may have tipped him into making his surprise announcement.

Even though Russia’s warplanes changed the balance of power on the ground inSyria, the Kremlin’s stark message is that Assad cannot rely on the Russians to bring him military victory. There has to be a political solution.

Western politicians have often claimed that Russia will always be ready to bail Assad out, but there has been contrary evidence for some time. At the meeting between Putin and Assad in Moscow last autumn, shortly after the Russian air campaign began, it was noticeable that in his public remarks before the cameras withdrew Putin repeatedly praised “the Syrian people” for their courage and determination in standing up to terrorism. He never praised Assad personally.

Putin also insisted that the purpose of his military intervention was to accelerate the peace process. Yes, we can stop you being overrun and defeated, he was telling Assad; but you cannot expect us to keep you in power for ever.

This message was made clear again when the Russians and Americans, along with the other outside powers involved, met for two rounds of talks in Vienna to hammer out a framework for negotiations among Syrians. In language that Assad and his officials have never copied, the Russians described the conflict in Syria as “a civil war”. Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, even used the phrase “the legitimate armed opposition”. This was a sharp departure from Assad’s terminology. The Syrian president continues to describe the struggle as a battle against terrorists, adding that if only Turkey and other states were to stop arming jihadis, everything would go back to normal.