New York: If you held up two maps of Syria — one from last September, when Russian forces first intervened in the chaotic civil war there, and one today — you would see that the battle lines look quite similar.
Russia’s intervention has succeeded in freezing its interests, along with Syria’s battle lines, largely in place. But hundreds of airstrikes, dozens of casualties and months of diplomacy have done little to demonstrably advance those interests: The war remains stalemated, with key areas under rebel control and pro-government forces unable to retake them.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has succeeded at winning Moscow a seat at any table where Syria’s future might be decided. But he has failed to leverage Syria into rapprochement with Western governments that still shun him and impose economic sanctions. Nor has his Middle Eastern adventure rallied the Russian public.
Though Americans sometimes perceive Putin as being on an endless victory march across the Middle East, dictating terms to allies and adversaries alike, analysts say the reality is more modest.
Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Institute of International Relations, based in Prague, said of the year-long campaign, “It’s hard to see much in terms of true strategic impact.”
It is easier to see where Russia has fallen short. Putin appeared hopeful he could use Syria to prove Russia was again to be respected as a great power: a message aimed both at Western powers and at Russia’s allies in formerly Soviet Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which were shaken by Moscow’s invasion and annexation of territory in Ukraine.
“If Russia is to look like a great power, then it has to stand by its clients, especially when it has so few,” Galeotti said.
But Russia’s military might has not made victory any more viable for its Syrian ally, which is increasingly reliant on Iranian officers and pro-government militias.
Nor have Western powers come around. Last year, Putin, in his first address to the UN General Assembly in a decade, called on the world to join him in “a genuinely broad international coalition” to fight extremists. Analysts suspected Putin sought a grand bargain in which the United States and European Union would drop sanctions and grant him concessions in Ukraine in exchange for his help in Syria.
A year later, no one has joined Putin’s coalition, and no grand bargain appears likely.
Russian state media have played up the intervention, presenting it to Russians as proof of their national greatness. But unlike the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which galvanised support for Putin, the Syria effort seems to have prompted less public interest. Russian legislative elections this month saw record low turnout, indicating deepening apathy.
Putin seems to have settled on two smaller accomplishments — each significant for Syria, but not much more — highlighting the gap between his superpower ambitions and his ability to achieve them.
First, the intervention has saved President Bashar Al Assad of Syria from further military setbacks.
For much of 2015, he had lost ground to Daesh and to rebels who advanced in part thanks to US-supplied anti-tank weapons.
Russian bombing forced opposition groups to hunker down, halting Al Assad’s retreat and even allowing him to seize some areas that, while small, make his current holdings more defensible. Russia has also aided Al Assad in besieging Aleppo, a rebel stronghold that was bombarded anew on Thursday and Friday.
This has forced opposition groups there to turn to extremists for help, making it harder for the United States to arm them or include them in any final peace deal.
Still, Genevieve Casagrande, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, said pro-government ground forces remain too few and too weak to come anywhere near winning the war — a problem no amount of Russian bombing can overcome. The net result: Syria’s stalemate is slightly less unfavourable to Al Assad, but it is still a stalemate.
Second, the intervention has forced the United States to include Russia in any negotiations. Putin cannot dictate terms any more than the Americans can, but he is now one of several leaders with effective veto power over any ceasefire or peace deal. This gives him leverage to preserve Russia’s access to its military bases in Syria and to ensure that any postwar government remains a Russian ally.
Both on the battlefield and in diplomacy, Putin’s best hope is to break even. Even that will require constant Russian involvement to prevent Al Assad’s gains from collapsing, which, in a paradox for Moscow, will also delay the settlement that it seeks and deepen the costs.
“What we’re going to see is actually more of a protracted conflict,” Casagrande said, warning that Russia’s involvement had also helped unify opposition groups.
Russia’s airstrikes are also backfiring in another way: Initially intended to draw Moscow closer to the West, they have instead alienated a world outraged by attacks on civilians.
Because the ground war is led by a patchwork of Syrian and Iranian officers and pro-government militias, Russia has few advisers on the front lines who can call in strikes. It is therefore unable to provide close-fire support during battles, Casagrande said, and has defaulted to a strategy of bombarding areas it believes are under rebel control.
This has led to vast numbers of civilian casualties — and appears to include strikes on humanitarian facilities. Even when the United States has sought limited coordination with the Russian air campaign, the White House has simultaneously signalled an almost visceral opposition to going much further.
Russia has avoided miring itself in a ground war in Syria, like the one in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but still appears unwilling to withdraw, as Putin said he would in March. Leaving now, with no demonstrable concessions, would only damage Putin’s sought-for superpower image.
Galeotti said Putin’s decision to stay in Syria made more sense through Russian eyes. While Americans often see Russia as a resurgent power galloping fearlessly across the globe, he said, Russian security and foreign policy officials — “the people who, according to some narratives, are busy trying to create a new Soviet Union” — see their country as surrounded and besieged by an aggressive, all-powerful United States.
“If I had to think of one word to characterise them, I think it is that they’re scared,” Galeotti said.
This fear is based partly on cold, hard fact. Russian leaders are all too aware that they are isolated and that their economy has shrunk, by some measures, to less than that of Spain. Spain!
But they are also driven by a lingering Cold War paranoia, in which every event — say, the outbreak of civil war in Syria — is presumed to be a US plot aimed at Russia’s destruction.
“They have this sense that the West is actually much more strategic and effective than it really is,” Galeotti said, adding that Americans have a similar habit for overstating Russian power and ambition. “In a way, what we actually see is both sides thinking that the other side is 10 feet tall.”
In reality, neither Russia nor the United States has found much success in faraway interventions. But their respective ambitions tend to shrink in ways that prolong their commitments, whether it is the United States settling for 15 years of war in Afghanistan or Russia conducting a year of airstrikes in Syria — likely to be followed by several years more.
