Russia's crusade to save Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has ended in failure, and Vladimir Putin has gone from being the arbiter of the Middle East to a strategist who is witnessing his greatest geopolitical defeat.
"The whole world was surprised by what happened [in Syria]. We are no exception," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged today.
The arrival of Bashar al-Assad in Russia on Sunday, where he has been granted political asylum, is a sign of a disaster that could be even greater if Moscow loses its military bases in the northwest of the Arab country.
These are the air base in Hmeimim and the naval base in Tartus, the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea.
Both are considered strategic for Russian military operations in the Middle East and the Sahel countries, a strip between the Atlantic to the west and the Red Sea to the east, and between the Sahara desert to the north and Sudan to the south.
At a medal ceremony for soldiers fighting in Ukraine today in the Kremlin, faces were grim, according to the Spanish news agency EFE: senior Russian officials do not know how to deal with the setback in Syria, so they are remaining silent.
Here are some of the important aspects for Russia of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, in an analysis by EFE:
Weakness in the eyes of allies and enemies
If the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, exposed the fragility of the Russian regime by staging an armed uprising in June 2023, the fall of Bashar al-Assad in less than two weeks exposes the weakness of Russian foreign policy.
Putin seems to be choosing his partners poorly: his "intimate enemy" Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, has prevailed in Syria, while Iran is increasingly losing ground in the Middle East.
The Russian secret services have confirmed their inability to warn Moscow of the rapid developments in the Arab country, just as in 2022 they wrongly informed Putin that the Ukrainians would not resist the Russian offensive.
Russia presents itself as the standard-bearer of a new multipolar order in the face of the Western monopoly, but it is incapable of confronting the Islamist threat, whether in Syria or in its own country.
The crusade launched by Putin 10 years ago was met in March with the death of 145 people in the attack on a concert hall near Moscow, the largest terrorist attack in the country in the last 20 years.
Two fronts, too many for the Kremlin
Putin not only saved the Syrian regime in 2015, but also prevented the United States from using the Syrian chemical weapons argument to invade the country two years earlier.
Moscow thought that the bombings by Russian aircraft and the threatening presence of its fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean were enough to keep the rebel factions at bay.
When the moment came, the Russian contingent turned out to be a "paper tiger": without regular forces on the ground, it resorted to mercenaries, who had clearly lost their breath since Prigozhin's death.
Putin's delusions of grandeur have cost Russia dearly: the war in Ukraine has been going on for almost three years and the Russian army, burdened by corruption, has shown that it cannot fight on two fronts at the same time.
Not even the launch of hypersonic missiles dissuaded Kiev, which attacked Russian territory with long-range Western missiles.
And while the Russians are advancing in the Donbass (eastern Ukraine), they have not yet driven the Ukrainians out of Russia's Kursk region.
This apparent weakness could become a problem for the Kremlin ahead of the expected negotiations between Putin and future US President Donald Trump.
The future of the bases is up in the air
In a desperate attempt, Moscow has in recent days established contacts with the rebels to prevent attacks on its military bases. However, all it has managed to get are timid security guarantees.
"It is premature to talk about this. In any case, it will be the subject of discussion with those in power in Syria," the Kremlin spokesman said today.
Peskov admitted that the situation in Syria was "extraordinarily unstable", but added that the Russian military had taken the necessary "precautionary measures".
The Russian airfield in Khmeimim has received dozens of fighters, fighter-bombers and assault helicopters since 2015, which have also taken off from airfields in Homs and Palmyra.
The Tartus base, the only naval base outside Russia's borders and in which Moscow has invested huge amounts of money since 2012, has hosted several warships, including frigates.
The closure of both facilities would be a blow to Russia, whose Mediterranean fleet would have nowhere to dock, as the Montreux Treaty prevents its transit through the Bosphorus Strait to bases in the Black Sea.
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