Putin’s Silence on Syria Suggests His Resignation Over Intervention
[already dated to an extent/in certain details, but still interesting, and continuingly significant, context]
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met with miners in western Siberia on Monday. Alexei Nikolsky/RIA Novosti, via Associated Press
By STEVEN LEE MYERS Published: August 28, 2013
MOSCOW — Russia has made its opposition to military intervention in Syria vehemently clear. The foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, warns daily about the risk of an escalating conflagration. A deputy prime minister said the West dealt with the Islamic world like “a monkey with a grenade.” A few commentators on the fringe have warned of World War III.
The one voice that has remained silent, though, is the one that matters most.
President Vladimir V. Putin has conspicuously avoided public comment on reports of a chemical weapons attack on civilians outside of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Aug. 21, which killed hundreds of people. Instead he has carried on, like many ordinary Russians, as if the civil war in Syria had not reached an ominous new phase. In the days after the attack, Mr. Putin attended a ceremony for the restoration of a fountain made famous in World War II [ http://eng.news.kremlin.ru/news/5872 ], visited a breakaway province of neighboring Georgia and toured a mine and dam in Siberia.
There is no doubt about Mr. Putin’s opposition to retaliatory strikes. Nor about his support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in a conflict Mr. Assad has described as a war against Islamic extremism.
Mr. Putin’s public reticence, though, reflects a calculation that Russia can do little to stop a military intervention if the United States and other countries move ahead without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council — and that he has little to lose at home, at least, if they do.
Mr. Lavrov, in remarks to reporters this week, made it clear that Russia’s reaction to international intervention in Syria would be limited to a war of words — “We, of course, are not planning to go to war with anybody,” he said. That stance could ultimately benefit Mr. Putin.
The crisis has added fuel to an anti-American sentiment — and to a lesser degree anti-Western sentiment — that had already become a refrain of Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012.
The point is driven home over and over by proxy in the state news media and in comments by officials, like the one about the monkey, posted on Twitter by a deputy prime minister, Dmitri O. Rogozin. Or by Robert A. Schlegel, a member of the lower house of Parliament from the majority United Russia party, who said in a statement on Wednesday that Western retaliatory strikes would aid Al Qaeda and would constitute “the height of cynicism.”
Though Mr. Obama went on to say that their interactions were often constructive, the comment infuriated Mr. Putin, according to one Russian official not authorized to be quoted by name.
More is at stake in Syria than a propaganda coup. While critics accuse Mr. Putin of blindly supporting Mr. Assad’s brutality, regardless of the circumstances, Mr. Putin’s abiding concerns are foreign intervention and the rise of Islamic extremism.
In his view, the United States and its partners have unleashed the forces of extremism in country after country in the Middle East by forcing or advocating change in leadership — from Iraq to Libya, Egypt to Syria.
While American and European leaders have cited what they call mounting evidence of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces, Russian officials continue to warn against a rush to judgment so precipitous that it can be seen only as a pretext for what they call the real motive: the overthrow of Mr. Assad.
Mr. Lavrov and other officials here say that the source of the chemical attack could well have been the rebels themselves, with the aim of provoking an international response that would turn the tide of the conflict.
Late Wednesday the Kremlin reported that Mr. Putin had spoken with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, saying that both agreed that the use of chemical weapons was “fundamentally unacceptable,” but adding that the crisis in Syria should be settled “using purely political and diplomatic means.”
In his only other reported interaction with a world leader since the crisis escalated, Mr. Putin told Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain that Russia did not have evidence of “whether a chemical attack took place,” or, if it did, who was behind it, according to a statement released by Mr. Cameron’s office [ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/syria-pm-phone-call-with-president-putin ].
A few dissenting voices in the United States and Europe have expressed skepticism toward the evidence, but here such skepticism is the consensus.
“It would be absolutely insane for Assad to use chemical weapons when the red line had been so clearly drawn,” said Aleksei K. Pushkov, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Parliament’s lower house. “He’s not a madman. He reasons logically.”
Another factor in Mr. Putin’s stance has been the general indifference to the war here.
“Of course, we can do without Assad or without Syria,” said Georgy I. Mirsky, a researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a Russian research group. “It’s not a matter of life and death for us. The much bigger principle — the global principle — is by no means to be seen as bending down under American pressure.”
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