Tom Rogan
Unherd, Dec. 8, 2024
“Putin’s overambition has come home to roost. He thought he had won in Syria and could easily squash Ukraine. Now the consequences of his latter failing have reverberated in the former country.”
Bashar al-Assad has been overthrown, fleeing Damascus after a rapid rebel advance. But the Syrian dictator is far from the only president likely to be despairing today, for Vladimir Putin is another big loser here.
For Putin, the collapse of the Syrian regime and removal of Assad from power poses two critical problems. Firstly, it represents a critical strategic loss. Secondly, it represents a stark decline in Russia’s global prestige.
Russia now seems almost certain to permanently lose both its naval base at Tartus and its air base at Latakia, its only such bases in the Middle East. The loss of Tartus is particularly painful, as the base allowed Russia to conduct sustained surface and submarine operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and served as a conduit for operations into the Indian Ocean. This power, and the global prestige it granted, is now gone. With the Russian Black Sea fleet already locked out of most of those waters under threat of Ukrainian attack, Moscow has lost permanent access to any warm-water ports — a huge dent to Putin’s global ambitions.
The entire world has been shocked by the speed and success of the Syrian rebels, particularly those led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led alliance. But the shock must be especially profound for Putin, given that Russia’s 2015 intervention in the conflict had seemingly swung the military initiative in Assad’s favour, essentially subjugating the Syrian regime to the Kremlin’s whims. ...SOURCE
