ical elite had convinced itself that Trump’s
election would bring in a golden new era of
non-intervention. ‘An America that minds
its own business is an America that suits us,’
State Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov
told me after Trump’s inauguration. Some
Russian politicians fantasised that Trump
and Putin would strike some kind of grand
bargain that would leave Moscow a free hand
in Ukraine and its near abroad in exchange
for Putin’s support in Syria and Iran.
But with Trump’s bombing of a regime
airbase this week, Syria suddenly went from
being an asset to Russia to being a dangerous
liability. Instead of being a diplomatic multi-
purpose tool, the fallout from Trump’s Syria
raid now threatens a series of Russian vital
interests. First, America and Britain are talk-ing about renewed and broader sanctions as
punishment for Moscow’s support for Assad
— just as the Kremlin was hoping to fracture
Europe’s unanimity on renewing its set of
Crimea-related sanctions. Second, the raid
signalled a breakdown in a new relationship
with Trump on which Putin had — and per-
haps still has — put high hopes.
And most devastatingly of all for Rus-
sia, the cruise missiles that streaked into the
sky last week served as a kind of salute to a
quiet palace coup inside the White House.
The isolationist Steve Bannon — an admirer
of Putin’s style of muscular conservatism and
follower of the Kremlin-favoured Eurasian
philo sopher Alexander Dugin — was oust-
ed from the National Security Council, whilemany of Trump’s new intelligence chiefs
and generals are notably hawkish on Rus-
sia. Even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
who ran the Russia portfolio at the US oil
giant Exxon before becoming its chief exec-
utive and has a close personal relationship
with Putin’s ally Igor Sechin, was vocal in his
criticism of Moscow’s support for Assad at
the G7 meeting. In short, Trump’s team has
turned out to be anything but pro-Kremlin
— and with allegations of Russian elector-
al interference swirling, Russia has become
politically toxic in Washington.
Putin doesn’t really care about Assad;
Russia has no vital interests there. The so-
called ‘Russian naval base’ at Tartus is in real-
ity a 300-yard-long strip of shallow quayside
with a fuelling station and a garrison of 30.
Rather, Syria is important to the Kremlin
as a symbol, the place where Putin drew his
own red line and where he finally stood up
to the world.
After two decades of western interven-
tions starting in Belgrade and Kosovo and
ending (as the Kremlin sees it) with US-
sponsorship of the Arab Spring and Ukraine,
Russia was finally pushing back against US’s
monopoly on foreign interventions and
regime change. The Syria intervention was
a textbook piece of Putin opportunism — a
regional war that Obama wasn’t interested in
dealing with became a theatre where Russia
got to show off its military prowess, accumu-
late diplomatic capital and give a domestic
audience a steady diet of stirring military vic-
tory. And all this at the cost of a deployment
of a single squadron of about 35 warplanes.
The problem for Moscow is that it’s hard-
er to get out of a war than into one. Moscow’s
relationship with Trump and the future of
sanctions are far more important priorities
to Putin than the future of the Assad regime.
Nonetheless, Pottery Barn rules apply — you
broke it, you own it. Syria may no longer
bring political dividends — but there’s no
easy way for Putin to extract himself without
losing face. Moreover, it is clear that Russia
can’t even control its own client Assad, who it
seems broke a chemical weapons agreement
proudly brokered by Russia in 2013.
On the ground, too, the situation is
approaching a crunch point. Russian air power
proved the decisive factor when Aleppo fell to
Assad’s troops — but unfortunately for Mos-
cow and Damascus, the rebels show no signs
of giving up. More importantly, US-backed
rebels led by the Kurds are likely to attack the
Isis stronghold of Raqqa. Once Raqqa — and
Mosul, in neighbouring Iraq — fall, a swath
of territory in Syria will be held by US anti-
Assad proxies and protected by US planes.
This was never going to be a war that Assad
could have won outright — but with the US
raid tipping the balance of power once again
against him, it looks like even a peace dictat-
ed on his (and Russia’s) terms is going to be
impossible. Syria, the war that gave Putin so
much prestige, is slipping beyond his control.F
or Vladimir Putin, Syria has been
the gift that kept on giving. His 2015
military intervention propelled Rus-
sia back to the top diplomatic tables of the
world — a startling comeback for a coun-
try that had spent two decades languishing
in poverty and contempt on the margins of
the world’s councils. At home, the war took
over as a booster of Putin’s prestige just as
the euphoria over the annexation of Crimea
was being eroded by economic bad news
caused by low oil prices and sanctions. In the
Middle East, Russia was able to show both
friends and enemies that it was once again
able to project power every bit as effective-
ly as the Soviet Union had once done. And
in Europe, the refugee crisis rocked the EU
just as the bloc had united behind sanctions
against Moscow — and strengthened the
hand of the kind of anti-immigrant, anti-
Brussels parties that the Kremlin has sup-
ported in France, Hungary, the Netherlands
and Italy. Another summer of refugee boats
may well serve to shatter the EU complete-
ly. As George Soros wrote in the Guardian
on Monday, ‘the most effective way Putin’s
regime can avoid collapse is by causing the
EU to collapse sooner’.
So until last week, Syria was a win-win
game for Russia. Continuing war would sow
useful chaos in Europe, while a Russian-
brokered peace would bring Moscow a new
sphere of influence and chalk up a significant
strategic victory for Putin.
Then two things went wrong: Assad
overreached, and Trump changed his mind.
The two events are linked. It has not yet been
definitively proved that the Assad regime
used sarin gas on the rebel-held town of
Khan Sheikhun. But if, as mounting evidence
collected by the UN suggests, Assad regime
generals were responsible, they apparently
made the mistake of taking Donald Trump
at his word. They never expected Ameri-
ca’s self-declared isolationist president to
intervene in Syria, whatever outrage they
perpetrated.
Assad was not the only one to be sur-
prised (or rather, not entirely surprised —
the US gave the Russians 90 minutes warning
under an early-warning protocol established
four years ago, and the Russian general staff
apparently alerted the Syrians immediately).
The Kremlin was shocked too. Russia’s polit-
Putin’s Syria problem
The Russian president is learning the drawbacks of intervention
OWEN MATTHEWSWhere the Easter Island heads come fromSyria may no longer bring dividends,
but there’s no easy way for Putin to
extract himself without losing face