Putin’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment in Syria
Moscow can indeed claim some successes in Syria. The first and by far most important is how it improved Russia’s standing at home and abroad. Russia entered Syria from a position of weakness, having blundered through two major crises at home. The first concerned Ukraine, where a revolution brought to power a pro-Western government that Moscow proved powerless to stop. Russia’s impotence in Ukraine was a serious stain on Putin’s record. Putin had promised Russian strength, but he had not been able to deliver on this key Russian imperative – maintaining Russian control over the buffer zone that has saved Russia from foreign invaders many times over. So he did one of the only things he could do: He annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that was already closely aligned with Russia. It was an act of provocation that earned Putin little but Western-led economic sanctions.
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