When former president Dmitry Medvedev (leading image, left), deputy head of the Security Council; the Russian military bloggers and the GRU’s favoured journalist; are as silent on Russian military action in Syria as they are at the moment, the signal they are sending is unmistakeably loud.
It is the sound of recriminations for President Vladimir Putin (centre); for the commanders of Russia’s forces in Syria; for General Valery Gerasimov (right), head of the General Staff, the GRU, and the Defense Ministry – all for having failed to detect, warn, or act on the Turkish, Israeli and American preparation of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces for their drive to Damascus to replace Bashar al-Assad, and allowing the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to stop Hezbollah from reinforcing its units in Syria from Lebanon, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from flying reinforcements from Iran.
“Yes,” says a well-informed Moscow source, “what we see in Syria is the sum of the worst misjudgements and mistakes the Russians made in the Ukraine. This is the Kremlin for one hundred percent. But in the Ukraine there has been learning from the mistakes and recovery. I don’t believe the defeat in Syria will lead to Putin making more concessions to Washington on Ukraine. On the contrary, I believe it hardens the positions on the Ukraine and releases the General Staff to wage strategic war with the US.”
There is a line of thinking in the General Staff, hinted in reporting by Russian military bloggers, which has proposed to preserve the bases at Tartus and Khmeimim, and establish a defence in depth between the north-south D35 road and the sea. This territory is west of the M5 highway linking Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, all of which HTS have captured. This roughly approximates the territory known in the Ottoman Empire until 1914 as the sanjak of Latakia.
A reliable military source says “the Russians would need to hold the north-south M53, D35, and D34 highways. This would give [Syrian Special Forces Commander General Suhayl] Hassan the capacity to maintain the defence all along this new border. This means retaking Masyaf, an important road junction west of Hama, and also Rabu.”
Hassan was last reported to have been headed for Latakia; there is no sign that he and his forces are capable of fight.
Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow with family members, the state news agency Tass has reported. Tass added the hint that negotiations are under way for evacuation of the bases. “Russian officials are in touch with representatives of armed Syrian opposition, whose leaders have guaranteed security of Russian military bases and diplomatic missions on the Syrian territory.”
The tactical and operational difficulties are insurmountable, another Russian source believes. He acknowledges there is no sign of the political will for the fight at the Kremlin. There are more signs, the source adds, that the order has been given to negotiate with the Turks a safe-passage agreement for full withdrawal from the country of all Russians.
Local reports are currently indicating that HTS and Turkish forces have moved west of the M5 highway to take Jebla, a town six kilometres from Khmeimim. If true, this indicates that the fight-back option has run out of opportunity on the ground, and will in the Kremlin.
The only senior Russian official to break the silence has been Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He was speaking in Doha on Saturday, November 7, before the fall of Damascus and the flight of Assad. The HTS operation was understood in advance, Lavrov admitted. It had been “carefully and long planned and is an attempt to change the situation on the ground, to change the balance of power. We will oppose this in every possible way, support the legitimate Syrian authorities and at the same time actively promote the need to resume dialogue with the opposition, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 2254.”
Lavrov also acknowledged the strategic scale of the defeat Russia has suffered. “Nothing goes smoothly in world diplomacy, but the events which we are witnessing today, they are clearly geared to undermine everything we have been doing during those years.”
MAPS OF THE LATAKIA SANJAK OPTION
According to the military source, “they’ll need to hold the north-south M53, D35, D34 highways. This would require retaking Masyaf, an important road junction west of Hama and extend eastwards to Rabu, eliminating the rebels west of that point.”
By Sunday evening, Moscow time, Lavrov’s spokesman, Maria Zakharova, announced “Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. At the moment, there is no serious threat to their safety.” She added that the Foreign Ministry was still hoping “for respect for the opinions of all ethnic and religious forces of Syrian society, and…efforts to establish an inclusive political process based on Resolution 2254, unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council.”
Source: https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/
Twenty-four hours earlier in Doha, Lavrov’s face betrayed less confidence. He was asked about the strategic stakes in Russia’s defeat in Syria: “How much of a blow is it to Russia that so much territory has been lost in such a short period of time? Because Russia and the Soviet Union before it has been such a big backer of Syria. How much of a blow is it, and will you intervene further militarily, not just diplomatically?”
Lavrov replied: “Our country has been a very big backer, not only of Syria, but also of Iraq, of Libya, of Lebanon. And it is not our fault that all the resolutions which were adopted on the Middle East issues (some of them were not adopted, for example, Iraq was bombed out of the statehood without any discussion in the Security Council) that the biggest trend of the modern world, namely the fight against those who want to keep hegemony, and on the other hand, those who would like to live in a free world…So the fight of these two worlds, one phasing out and another one emerging, is not going without clashes. And the conflicts which were adventures, aggressive adventures which were launched by the U.S. and its allies in Iraq, Libya, Palestine, because the behavior of the United States on what is going on in Palestine is absolutely unacceptable, invading Syria. All this is the repetition of the old, very old habit to create some havoc, some mess, and then to fish in the muddy waters. And the Middle East and Europe is not enough already.”
On Saturday night Lavrov understood that the military options for Russia were diminishing fast; he did not know what Putin had decided. “Militarily, Russia helps the Syrian army with the air force, which is based at Khmeimim. And we help the Syrian army to counter the attacks of terrorists. What is the forecast? I cannot guess. We are not in the business of guessing…”
He was asked about the future of the bases. “On one side of that will be your big naval base that you were given for 49 years, your sovereign naval base, and also your large air base in Latakia. Is Russia worried about those? Apparently, some analysts say there have been satellite images of Russian vessels already leaving your Tartus naval base.” Lavrov replied: “ Well, there is a naval exercise in the Mediterranean. Maybe your satellite images took this for something different. But, once again. If you want me to say, yes, we lost in Syria, we are so desperate, if this is what you need, let’s continue. But my point is I am not in the business of guessing what is going to happen. We are trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say that they are no longer terrorists.”
“This is a strategic defeat”, leading milblogger Mikhail Zvinchuk has conceded. “It is not so important whether everything crumbled there or somewhere there was a betrayal – the fact itself is important…If any help was planned, then it has run out of time – the Syrian army and the state have disintegrated too quickly. Russia has to solve these issues. 1. Conservation of its military bases in Latakia. 2. Evacuation of its citizens and military from Damascus. 3. General minimization of consequences and costs.” — December 7 – 22:19
Blame for Putin for allowing the Israelis unopposed freedom of action in the air above Syria and Lebanon was hinted at by Zvinchuk. “In the case of Iran, everything is very difficult: even if you omit the political timing, the question of logistics arises, namely, how to ensure the transportation of troops and logistics. The land corridor across Iraq is closed – Deir ez-Zor was taken by the Kurds and the track in the desert by militants from [the US base] al-Tanf. To transfer all that is required through the air to Damascus is not allowed by the Israeli Air Force, threatening to simply shoot down the aircraft.”
A Moscow source adds: “the rebels can’t be fought off on the ground. If they gather and storm there will be a massacre. So the only realistic option left is to hit their command and control centres. But if that could have been done, it would have been done sooner. At this point we should conclude the Russians have no cards to play. But will the Turks and Americans play their cards? Gerasimov and the generals have no leverage. They are as much to blame. There are no blameless Russian leaders in this – civilian, intelligence and army.”
In the Moscow military blog, Bayraktar Witnesses (Свидетели Байрактара), Alexander Kharchenko wrote on Saturday evening that since the Syrians saw no future for themselves in fighting for the Assad regime, there was no justification for the Russians to fight in defence of an untenable position.
“It is a mistake to believe the state rests only on the security forces. The population accepts the rules of the game because they have the answer to the question: ‘Why is all this necessary?’ The state is tolerated for the sake of democracy, personal enrichment, security, and hundreds of other reasons…In recent years, the Syrians have fought and died in order to take back the old Syria. They wanted to destroy the jihadists, rebuild the economy and live as before. Bashar al-Assad was a symbol of these processes. Unfortunately, after all their trials, the Syrian people were living worse off. There was no gas, light, or gasoline. All this was multiplied by pervasive corruption. In Idlib [under Turkish control], there was gas and light, and there were no problems with trade.”
“When the militants’ offensive began, the soldiers simply did not understand why they had to die at the front. They had both equipment and ammunition, but why would they shoot at terrorists? Yes, they will stop the militants, yes they will lose a couple of thousand soldiers, but why all this if it gets even worse after the victory?”
“And this article is not written about Syria at all. These mechanisms work equally effectively in any part of the globe. These lessons need to be learned. It’s not for nothing that we say that a fool learns from his mistakes, and a smart one learns from others.”
On Sunday evening Zvinchuk (right) concluded in Rybar: “As of 19 o’clock, one can, alas, draw disappointing conclusion: Russia’s military presence in the Middle East region is hanging by a thread. Seeing the lack of activity of the Russian forces in Syria, the Kurdish formations began to block certain objects of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the Trans-Euphrates. Jebla is under the control of armed groups. The Khmeimim base has been cut off. Russian warships have been withdrawn from the port of Tartus in order to reduce the threat from stray gangs deciding o fire at them.
The positions at the oil plant in the Homs desert are also blocked.”
Breaking the public media silence in Moscow, Zvinchuk reported there is now nothing left to say “about the plans of the Russian military leadership: what was decided by someone in high office is absolutely irrelevant simply because there was no initiative. Waiting for instructions from Moscow on Sunday, not understanding that it was necessary to act outside the framework of the system — to attempt another attack on Pristina or to rush to the defense of South Ossetia did not work. At one time, these were the very events that went down in history and glorified Russia precisely because people on the ground acted on their own initiative, taking on much more than their orders allowed. This time everything was done correctly by the book. In other words, inert and indifferent.”
