RUSSIAN POSITION:BEHIND RUSSIA'S insistence that it is seeking a negotiated solution to the crisis in Syria lies Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin's determination not to lose diplomatic and economic clout in the Middle East or suffer a geopolitical defeat to western powers as he prepares to return to the Kremlin.
Russia has been castigated for deciding, with China, to block a proposed United Nations resolution aimed at stopping the Syrian regime’s onslaught against its opponents.
The US called it a “travesty”, Germany was “appalled”, France labelled the move a “scandal” and Britain said the position of Moscow and Beijing was “incomprehensible and inexcusable”.
Before flying to Damascus yesterday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the reaction to Moscow’s veto “bordered on the hysterical”, and he criticised the West for trying to rush through a resolution that blamed only Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the violence.Lavrov also said unnamed foreign states were supplying arms to Assad’s opponents, and were more intent on ousting him than finding a peaceful, durable settlement to the crisis.
Moscow’s position on Syria takes it a step further away from Washington and the EU, continuing a divergence that has picked up pace in recent months as Putin prepares to replace his less hawkish protege, Dmitry Medvedev, as president.
One of the sharpest exchanges between the two allies during their four years as Russia’s ruling “tandem” came last year, when Medvedev described as “unacceptable” Putin’s remark that a western-backed UN resolution on Libya resembled “medieval calls for crusades”.
Medvedev abstained from the UN Security Council vote on that resolution. It passed, and opened the way for the Nato bombing that helped drive Muammar Gadafy out of power. Moscow’s powerful political hawks, foremost among them Putin, are determined not to lose another old ally in the same way.
The Kremlin has financed and armed Syria since Assad’s father came to power after a 1970 coup. Russia still has multibillion-dollar weapons contracts with Damascus and its only naval base outside the former Soviet Union is on the Syrian coast at Tartus; Moscow’s warships visited the facility last month in an apparent show of strength and of support for Assad.
Putin – who already appears to have retaken control of foreign policy from the increasingly anonymous Medvedev – cannot risk losing one of Russia’s last footholds in the Middle East, particularly as he seeks to set a strong tone for his return to the Kremlin.
Moscow also fears that, if the Assad regime falls, the next country to be consumed by revolt could be Iran, Russia’s other major ally in the region and another leading customer for its weapons and nuclear energy technology.
Putin’s game is a dangerous one, however. In appearing to prop up Assad, he risks poisoning relations with the US, EU and the many Gulf states that want Assad to go.