Syria in 2017 (January-April)

[Azor]

Two weeks before the major Russian and Hezbollah attack on Aleppo...the Russian ambassador in Syria publicly stated "Assad will not attack Aleppo"...what then was the results of that Russian statement...Aleppo fell...

And long before that remember when Assad gave one of his first public interviews where he publicly stated he was going to recapture all of Syria...AND everyone said he was crazy because he did not have the troops...BUT now we see at 150K Shia troops inside Syria AND he was not publicly rebutted by Russia...

Again, none of this disputes my opinion that Assad’s and Khamenei’s diverge sharply from those of Putin. As for the “150K Shia troops”, most of these would be Alawis enrolled in the National Defense Force. But we both know that the 35,000 foreign Shia mercenaries led by Iranian officers are the ones doing the actual fighting, killing and dying on the front-lines, supported by Russian and Syrian airpower.

To some extent, you are conflating the Russian relationship with Luhansk and Donetsk, with the Russian relationship with Damascus and Teheran. The sack of Aleppo was probably more of an opportunity to gain aviation ground-attack experience and to make the U.S. appear powerless, than it was an operation that the Russians were advocating for.

From Michael Kofman at War on the Rocks (https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/no...rough-start/):

Assad made fools of both Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama, who certified that he had given up his chemical weapons as part of the arrangement which first spared him from American strikes in fall of 2013. Hence, we saw practically no response from Putin. Instead, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev was trotted out to ramble something akin to a rebuke on his Facebook account. Just to make it clear, Monday night the head of Russia’s Federation Council implied they were not going to defend Assad from external threats. Given the outcome, Putin is unlikely to forgive Assad for this embarrassment, and may be dreaming of firing 60 cruise missiles at something Assad cares more about than al-Shayrat airbase. For Moscow, this affair is probably an unexpected and bitter pill to swallow. It once again demonstrates that their desire for a role as power broker in Middle East is aspirational at best, and control over local actors in Syria remains elusive

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Russia is not going to abandon Assad and leave the ME which has been their major dream since WW2...Obama had abandoned the US position there for 70 odd years and actually Trump will continue that move...

Russia is doing a full mobilization as the rest of the Western Military District follows 1.GuardsTankArmy. East and Central MDs already out. Russia is now in the midst of a full scale combat alert FOR the entire Russian Army...never done even in Cold War...

I have never suggested that Putin is going to abandon Assad or exit Syria. What I have consistently said is that Putin seems satisfied with the current military balance and territorial dispositions, and seems more interested in freezing the conflict than aiding in the reconquest of Syria and re-establishment as a unitary state under Assad’s rule, which would probably be a march to folly.

As Kofman also noted: “Russia’s military footprint in Syria remains intentionally so small that it clearly is not meant to defend Assad.” Some saber-rattling in the Western MD says nothing about a deeper Russian commitment to Syria. Clearly, Putin is angry and seeking to save face publicly. I am more keener on what may be going on behind closed doors, as I hope you would be. Putin does not have to confront the West in order to placate his increasingly unruly domestic audience, but he must be seen to be doing so.

Russia is in the strange position of having more overseas basing opportunities than military assets to deploy, whether we are speaking of Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and probably Iran and Venezuela as well.

As for your references to Trump and his domestic political imbroglios, I won’t be touching that with a ten-foot barge pole.