CAPITULO III DE LAS VIAS
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As to be expected, Russian state-controlled media were quick to boast about the successes of Russian campaign in Syria. Putin hailed the Russian operations as a humanitarian success and
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argued that “the effective work of our military allowed the peace process to begin (…) Syrian government troops and patriotic forces have changed the situation in the fight with international terrorism and have ceased the initiative” (Putin, 2016).
It is certainly true that Syrian government forces have benefitted from Russia’s added airpower. Aided by Iranian ground troops and the Russian Air Force, the Syrian government has made considerably accelerated gains compared to the beginning of the campaign (Casagrande et al, 2016: 9). These gains might be a successful way to force the opposition to the negotiating table, although that has consistently maintained the departure of Assad as a precondition for peace; a measure the government has not been willing to accept.
The relatively sudden and decisive introduction of modern Russian Sukhoi-type jets combined with the sporadic use of its LLACM’s raised eyebrows in the West: for the first time in the post-Soviet era, Russia has used its military force outside of the FSU, and in quite an astute manner. Gressel (2015: 1), somewhat in admiration, calls Russia’s operations “the culmination of a systematic military reform that has been insufficiently appreciated by the European Union and the US”.
In the mere space of three weeks, Russian forces were able to set up an airbase from scratch outside the FSU. The Russian Ministry of Defence, contrary to its continuing public deception over Ukraine, has publicly distributed targeting videos of its airstrikes, priding itself over Russia’s high-tech capabilities. Moscow, in addition, has used drones to assess damages. Essentially, as Myers and Schmitt (2015) argue, Russia has used Syria as a “proving ground” to demonstrate to the world (and to its domestic audiences) that it is a resurgent power whose view of the world is to be reckoned with. In many ways, this is a far cry from tactically calamitous operations in Georgia.
Notwithstanding these successes, one should analyse these developments with a careful dose of nuance. Even though Russian military capabilities have seriously improved, its bombing campaign has demonstrated some weaknesses. The bulk of the Russian strikes have not been separate high-precision strikes as conducted by the U.S.-led anti-ISIS campaign above Syria. Instead, the majority of Russian strikes have been conducted with so-called “dumb bombs” in the framework of traditional Soviet-style operations in Close Air Support (CAS) for troops on the ground, thus indicating that Russia’s high-tech capabilities remain limited. U.S. officials also have alleged that a number of LLACMs did not reach targets in Syria but instead land in Iran (Slawson, 2015). Nevertheless, Syria is the first instance that Russia has effectively used
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modern precision-guided equipment, and means that it has made significant progress (Bodner, 2015).
These “dumb bombs” are likely to have caused excessive civilian casualties; in March, human rights organizations have put the death toll for Russian strikes to around 2,000 (Graham- Harrison, 2016). Some organizations allege that civilian targets, such as hospitals, schools, or industry, have actually constituted a deliberate part of the Russian strategy in order to break the morale of the opposition forces. Amnesty International, for example, believes that the Russian Air force has deliberately targeted hospitals as a means of breaking a vital lifeline for civilians in rebel-occupied territories, thus forcing them to flee (Amnesty International, 2016). Overall, the intent of Russian strategy is difficult to independently establish in the context of a complex civil war, and Russian official outlets are unlikely to tell the whole truth, since throughout they have ambivalently maintained that it was only striking “terrorists”.
Russia’s non-discriminatory approach with regards to anti-Assad forces may serve to exacerbate the civil war. By presenting the civil war as a simplistic dialectic between legitimate government and terrorists, the bombing campaign may undermine the government’s willingness to compromise into a political transition with its more moderate opponents. This is not necessarily in Russia’s interest, because it then may be dragged into a costly, heavily sectarian conflict for a longer time than it was set out to be. What Russia needs is a political resolution that safeguards its future interests in Syria; that does not necessarily rule out a compromise with opposition. On the other hand, Moscow will argue that its strategy will coerce the opposition to the negotiating table and eventually force it into a situation it would not have accepted without the Russian air cover.
At the moment of writing, it is still too early to say what the longer-term consequences are of the Russian intervention for the Syrian peace process – a process that has continued to fail to take conclusive shape many times in Geneva, as the conflict rages on in its sixth year. It is however without doubt that the Russian intervention has bolstered the government’s relative strength. At this point, it looks likely that the regime will survive, although Assad’s personal rule is still in the balance. Moreover, it has shown that Russian modern military capabilities have improved in the wake of the Georgian war, thus cementing both domestic and international prestige. For Russia, these combined developments will for now certainly be categorized as victory.
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