Why Russia is suddenly interested in Syria’s civil war

theglobeandmail.com ^ | Sep. 09, 2015 10:43AM EDT | GEORGE PETROLEKAS

[Trumpinator]

...snip...

However, it is important to understand why Russia chose this moment to move, when it could have done so at any time.

...snip...

With Mr. al-Assad now controlling only 17 per cent of the country, and fighting on an axis running from Damascus, Homs, Aleppo and Latakia (oddly enough the centres of Alawite and Christian populations), the fear is that without any discernible moderate opposition the groups best positioned to take advantage of an Assad collapse are IS – the best organized – and any number of splinter Islamist groups such as the al-Nusra Front. IS was not spawned by the Syrian civil war but took advantage of it, flowing in from Iraq. The thought of a clear victory by IS or some other Sunni Islamist group is unimaginable to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For Mr. Putin, Islamist success in Syria will reverberate in his own backyard in Chechnya..

...snip...

Often forgotten in the West is that the majority of Christians in Syria, the land of one of the oldest Patriarchates in Christendom (the Patriarchate of Antioch) – founded by Peter and Paul in 34 AD before Peter founded the Holy See in Rome – is resident in Damascus and has collegial relations with the Patriarchate of Moscow.

Mr. Putin, who portrays himself as the “defender of the faith” of Orthodox values, has a close alliance with the Moscow Patriarchate and its Eastern Orthodox interpretation of history.

Russia has, however, recently made statements to the effect that it is not tied personally to Mr. al-Assad, hinting that power-sharing or elections could occur – a likely code to mean that Alawite and Christian minority rights would have to be respected and protected. Equally, any effort that abets the so-far anemic efforts to dismantle the Islamic State should be welcomed.

...snip....

[ETL]

They [the Russians] are smart cookies when it comes to gaining a foothold in strategic locations.

Sure are. They play chess. Many of us, unfortunately, would have difficulty setting up the board for a game of simple checkers.

[Trumpinator]

Who the heck are you to threaten me? Are you even an American? Or just pretending to be one so you can push your ethnic grudges on here? Short work of me indeed.

[Trumpinator]

By the way, you did not deny you were the same person as the other guy, I see. It just seems you both do a routine together.

[ETL]

The "KGB" went with Putin, as in the common nickname for him: "KGB Putin". Common to the conversation (or arguments) you have in your head.

Are you saying you don't know, or believe?, that Putin was a KGB agent?

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Who the heck are you to threaten me?

A guy who knows the facts better than you do, and will make you look like a clown. You weren't on my radar before, but your overreaction to ETL will have me watching your threads for Pro-Russian propaganda.

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts — in Russia and the West — have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..." (continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[ETL]

July 2015...
Officials: Iran nuclear deal fuels Middle East arms race, boosts Russia’s influence
FoxNews ^ | July 14, 2015 | Catherine Herridge

[Fledermaus]

I hope the Russian meddling in the ME is going to bite them back hard.

Unfortunately, with Obama in the WH, the same can be said for us.

[ETL]

I messed up on the quotes in this post above.

Let me try it again...

_________________________

RE: The "KGB" went with Putin, as in the common nickname for him:
"KGB Putin".

Common to the conversation (or arguments) you have in your head.

Are you saying you don't know, or believe?, that Putin was a KGB agent?

[Trumpinator]

but your overreaction to ETL will have me watching your threads for Pro-Russian propaganda.

Why? Is ETL your other persona?

[ETL]

"Mr. Putin, who portrays himself as the “defender of the faith” of Orthodox values, has a close alliance with the Moscow Patriarchate and its Eastern Orthodox interpretation of history."

"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."

"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.

If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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“The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century',” Putin said in 2005.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
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"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor "

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
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"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg

[Trumpinator]

Everyone know Putin was in the KGB, the way you ranted - and it was a rant - sounded like a crazy homeless person accusing people of being KGB agents of Putin.

I posted an article from a NATO military adviser explaining the Russian motivation in Syria as he sees it. This is proof of KGB activity? And you know better than him because? I still don't see you or your twin refute the man's points - just trolling and spamming others.

[Trumpinator]

And that spam you posted has what to do with Syria?

[infowarrior]

I always thought that prophesy had to do with the past (it was already fulfilled when the Persians under Cyrus defeated the Assyrians) and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. But now I am not so sure.

The prophecy, 'the burden of Damascus', as it were, *is* that Damascus will literally cease to be a functioning, inhabited city, literally in a very short time frame. Can you name me *one* instance in its several millenia existence where this occurred? No, it had never happened, and thus *must*, by process of elimination, occur at some future date.

During the reign of Assad's father, I could not foresee this happening, since *that* individual was too cunning to place his nation and his capital in a position where it could become reality. His son, the chinless wonder? Not so much. Even *he* (Hafez Assad) knew that the current 'strong man' in Syria isn't strong at all, and *never* wanted his son to succeed him. Hell, boy-Assad was trained *not* as a dictator (see Uday and Qusay Hussein for examples), but as an eye-doctor...

the infowarrior

[ETL]

Is ETL your other persona?

Well, I guess most people who know KGB Putin's history might come across similarly in various ways, as do most of the SOBs here who constantly post puff pieces on him.

[Trumpinator]

Damascus has been sacked plenty of times. Even Carthage was re-built. Even if ISIS does take over Damascus it will still be lived in. So I just took that to mean conquered. But it may refer to a nuclear explosion - I get what you are saying. I am open to everything at this point.

[Trumpinator]

I honestly have no idea why you see this as a puff piece on Putin and the rest of your statement makes no sense but I still see you don’t deny you and that other guy are the same persona.

[Admin Moderator]

Why don’t you let me worry about that?

[Trumpinator]

No problem. Thank you.

[infowarrior]

Damascus has been sacked plenty of times.

Sacking a city, while it *can* lead to that, does not automatically place a city into the category of "being taken away from *being* a city". That language specifies nothing less than Troy/Carthage/Sparta level destruction. In short nothing left but ruins too costly to rebuild on...

the infowarrior