It is an invisible war, disappeared from the screens after having saturated them. Unpopular, too. The “trophies” brought back from Syria, circulating through Russia, in 2019, did not generate the expected enthusiasm. This exhibition organized by the Ministry of Defense triggered a flood of criticism on social networks, who denounced the cost of this propaganda operation and its bad taste.. Since then, the triumphant announcements have ceased, as have the videos of airstrikes, the concerts in the ruins of Palmyra or the reports on the aid given to the Syrian populations …
Despite the multiple announcements by President Vladimir Putin – the first dating back to March 2016, less than six months after the start of his armed intervention – the Russian contingent in Syria (around 3,000 men today, not counting the mercenaries of the Wagner company) is not about to return home. And he will complete his mission discreetly, if he ever completes it. Because after the military victories, the fear of getting bogged down begins to emerge.
The current difficulties do not detract from the initial successes. The arrival in the Syrian sky, in 2015, of the Russian MiG and Sukhoï changed the situation on the ground. The result of a deliberate strategy of intensive bombing, their operations brought down the rebels – included under the qualifier of “terrorists” whatever their political affiliation -, returning the Assad regime to control over the strategic corridor of “useful Syria”, along the Deraa-Damascus-Aleppo axis. They also claimed 6,862 civilian lives, according to the latest count in March from the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).
Backed by its bases in Tartous and Hmeimim, Moscow took advantage of the Syrian theater to experiment with new equipment, while its army completed on the ground the transformation started by the reforms in 2008: around 500 generals and 90% of Russian pilots have passed. by Syria, according to a count established in October 2020 by the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda.
Great unmissable power
On a geopolitical level, the gain is also indisputable. The Syrian conflict has allowed Russia, which became a pariah for its action in Ukraine in 2014, to regain its status as an inescapable great power, and not only through its power of nuisance. In six years, she has imposed as the central actor of the Syrian game, able to speak as well to Iran as to Israel and, above all, to keep Westerners at bay. The Russian awakening is thus the mirror of American renouncements, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump.
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