04/12/12
#Syrian opposition delegation arrives in Moscow
Representatives of Syria’s National Coordination Council visit Moscow for talks.
A delegation from Syria’s main opposition coalition - the National Coordination Council - arrived in Moscow on Thursday for talks.
They will be meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss ways of settling the conflict in their homeland.
The delegation will later give a press conference
21/10/12
TODAYSZAMAN.COM, İSTANBUL
Turkish jets forced the Syrian plane, en route from Moscow to Damascus, to land at an airport in Ankara on Oct. 10 and officials seized military communication equipment and parts that could be used in missiles before allowing the plane to resume its journey.
While Turkish officials have so far declined to name the source of the intelligence obtained by Turkey on the presence of non-civilian cargo on the plane, the Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that US intelligence agencies were behind the tip that led the Turkish military to intercept and ground the plane.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week the Syrian plane was carrying Russian-made ammunition destined for Syria’s Defense Ministry.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last Friday that the grounded plane was legally carrying Russian radar parts for Syria.
Lavrov insisted the shipment of “electric equipment for radars” was legitimate cargo in compliance with international law, but he added that it was of “dual purpose,” meaning it could have both civilian and military applications.
According to the report, “as Syria’s internal conflict has increasingly spilled across its northern border into Turkey, the US government has stepped up cooperation with its key NATO ally.”
The report quoted US officials as saying that military officials from both countries have recently “met to make contingency plans to impose no-fly zones over Syrian territory or seize Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.”
14/10/12
Are Turkish-Russian ties at risk over Syria?
As tensions between Syria and Turkey rise, we discuss the impact of the ongoing conflict on the region
Relations between Syria and Turkey have hit an all time low as cross-border fighting left five Turkish civilians dead. Earlier this week, Turkey intercepted a Syria-bound plane saying it was carrying Russian-made defense equipment - a claim Russia denies.
The plane was en route from Moscow to Damascus and was forced to land in Ankara, where authorities confiscated the cargo.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, says the plane was carrying military supplies: “The equipment, tools, material and ammunition was being sent from a Russian agency that’s equivalent to our machinery and chemistry agency, to the Syrian defense ministry. This equipment is now being examined by our relevant units.”
But so far Turkey has not supplied any evidence of what it says it has seized, and Russia has denied sending any weapons to Syria, although Sergey Lavarov, the Russian foreign minister, confirmed that the cargo included legal radar equipment.
“Because of the various speculations on the incident with the Syrian plane, I would like to say that we don’t have any secrets. We checked on the situation. Of course, there were no arms on the plane and they couldn’t be there. On the plane was cargo that the legal Russian supplier sent by legal means to the legal customer. This cargo is electric equipment for radars. Dual purpose equipment, but not forbidden by any international conventions,” Lavrov said.
Syria has called the incident an act of piracy and a violation of international law. Syrian state television showed pictures of what it said were armed Turkish soldiers moments before they confiscated the cargo. It said the troops humiliated the plane’s crew by handcuffing them and treating them roughly.
This latest development is yet another sign of the deteriorating relations between Turkey and Syria. Recent mortar fire from Syria into Turkey had already strained their relationship.
Turkey has since released the passenger jet and its crew but the incident caused a diplomatic dispute between Russia and Turkey that has emphasised the continuing rift between regional and international powers over which side to support in the war inside Syria.
Syria has announced a ban on Turkish civilian flights over its territory in a move it says is in retaliation for a similar Turkish ban on Syrian flights.
Inside Syria, with presenter Hazem Sika, speaks to guests: Fadi Hakura, a specialist on Turkey with the British think-tank Chatham House; Bassam Imadi, a foreign relations representative of the Syrian National Council. He is also Syria’s former ambassador to Sweden; and Vyacheslav Matusov, a former Russian diplomat.
“He [Vyacheslav Matusov] is complaining about a few boxes [of radar equipment] – but these few boxes are sensitive equipment that make other killing machines work. So I think one should now face the truth about it: Russia is supporting fully this regime and is becoming a partner in killing the Syrian people - and I am very sorry for that because we used to love the Russians because we have so many Russians among us in Syria … What the Russian government is doing is bad for the future relations between the Syrian people and the Russian people.”
Bassam Imadi, a foreign relations representative of the Syrian National Council
10/10/12
Minister says the passenger aircraft intercepted en route from Moscow to Damascus was carrying “objectionable cargo”.
A Syrian plane carrying roughly 30 passengers has been allowed to leave Turkey after it was grounded for over eight hours on Wednesday.
Turkey said it seized “objectionable cargo” aboard a Syrian passenger plane it intercepted en route from Moscow to Damascus.
The A-320 plane was escorted on Wednesday evening by two Turkish jets to Ankara’s Esenboga Airport, officials and news reports say.
The move marks a new deterioration in relations between Turkey and Syria, already heightened by days of cross-border shelling.
“There is illegal cargo on the plane that should have been reported” in line with civil aviation regulations, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying by
“There are elements on board that can be considered objectionable,” he added, without elaborating.
The confiscated cargo might be missile parts, Turkish NTV news channel reported.
Earlier, Davutoglu said that the plane was forced to land because of information that it may be carrying “non-civilian cargo”.
Russia, from where the Syrian plane took off, is one of the closest allies of the Syrian government and has blocked several UN resolutions against Damascus.
“Once a week a Syrian Airlines airplane flies from Moscow bound for Damascus,” Interfax quoted Vnukovo Airport spokeswoman Yelena Krylova as saying. “The plane took off normally, there were no incidents.”
Syrian airspace ‘unsafe’
In a related development, Turkish authorities declared Syrian airspace to be “unsafe” and were stopping Turkish aircraft from flying over the war torn country.
TRT said a Turkish plane that had already taken off for Saudi Arabia made a detour and landed at a Turkish airport on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Turkey’s military chief pledged to respond with more force to any further shelling from Syria, keeping up the pressure on its southern neighbour a day after NATO said it stood ready to defend Turkey.
General Necdet Ozel was inspecting troops who have been put on alert along the 910km-border with Syria after a week of cross-border artillery and mortar exchanges that have sparked fears of a wider regional conflict.
Turkey has reinforced the border with artillery guns and also deployed more fighter jets to an airbase close to the border region after shelling from Syria killed five Turkish civilians last week.
“We responded and if [the shelling] continues, we will respond with more force,” the private Dogan news agency quoted Ozel as saying during a visit to the town of Akcakale.
Meanwhile, battles between government forces and opposition fighters continued across Syria on Wednesday.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, urged the Assad’s regime to declare a unilateral ceasefire, calls which Syria rejected.
Hillary Mann Leverett, senior foreign policy lecturer at the American University in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera that the “increasingly militarised” tensions between Turkey and Syria is “very, very destabilising”, with potential for NATO to get involved.
“The precedent is certainly there. NATO got involved pretty quickly in Libya, and the plans are there to become involved in Syria,” said Mann Leverett.
“The United States has deployed what it calls advisers, basically a military unit, to Jordan,” she added.
The uprising in Syria started in March last year and has claimed about 30,000 lives, according to the opposition.
Anatolia news agency following security checks on the aircraft’s cargo.
09/09/12
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday acknowledged deep differences with Russia over how to handle the crisis in Syria, saying she would continue to try to convince Moscow to back increased international pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad even if such a step is unlikely.
A day after Russia soundly rejected her call for U.N. sanctions to be imposed on Syria if Assad refuses to stop fighting and relinquish power, Clinton said she was “realistic” in her approach. She said that if the Russians refused to go along the United States and its friends would boost their support for the Syrian opposition.
“The United States disagrees with the approach on Syria,” she told reporters at a news conference at the end of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit where she was filling in for President Barack Obama. “We have to bring more pressure to bear on the Assad regime to end the bloodshed and begin a political, democratic transition.”
The Obama administration has been hoping to jack up pressure on Assad at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session and potentially introduce a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would include sanctions. Russia and China have blocked three previous similar resolutions because they could lead to sanctions.
In discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Clinton said she had underscored the resolution “will only be effective if it includes consequences for non-compliance.”
“There is no point in passing a resolution with no teeth because we have seen time and time again that Assad will ignore it and keep attacking his own people,” she said.
But, she allowed that convincing the Russians would be a tough, if not impossible sell.
“We have to be realistic,” she said. “We haven’t seen eye-to-eye with Russia on Syria.”
“That may continue, and if it does continue, then we will work with like-minded states to support the Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls and to help prepare Syria for a democratic future and help it get back on its feet again,” she said.
After meeting Clinton on Saturday, Lavrov said bluntly Russia opposes penalties against the Assad government, in addition to new ones against Iran over its nuclear program, in part because they harm Russian commercial interests.
“Our American partners have a prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more sanctions against Syria and against Iran,” Lavrov said. “Russia is fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them.”
Unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran increasingly take on an extraterritorial character, directly affecting the interests of Russian business, in particular banks, he said.
“We clearly stated that this was unacceptable, and they listened to us. What the result will be, I don’t know,” Lavrov said.
Clinton had told Lavrov that the Security Council needs to do more to send “a strong message” to Assad, given the escalating level of violence in Syria, said a senior U.S. official, adding that the council risks “abrogating its responsibility” if it fails to act. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.
Russia and China have blocked three Security Council resolutions that would have punished Syria if the Assad government did not accept a negotiated political transition. Clinton said in Beijing this past week that the U.S. was “disappointed” by the vetoes.
She had earlier called the actions “appalling” and said they put Russia and China on the “wrong side of history.” That assertion was rejected by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at a news conference with Clinton on Wednesday, when Yang said history would prove China’s position to be correct.
The question of sanctions against Syria and Iran will be a main topic of conversation among officials later this month at the U.N. General Assembly.
Despite Russia’s refusal to join the U.S. and its allies in seeking more pressure against Syria and Iran, Clinton said the Obama administration wants Congress to remove Russia from a 1974 law that denies Russia normal trade relations with the U.S because of Soviet-era laws restricting the emigration of Jews.
Now that Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, membership that the United States long supported, Clinton said it would be “ironic” if American businesses were unable to do business in Russia because of U.S. law.
05/09/12
A destoryed Syrian Army tank. Russia has indicated it will not provide Assad with any new weapons. (photo credit: CC BY/FreedomHouse,Flickr)
Russia told its citizens to leave Syria amid escalating violence on Tuesday. It cautioned its nationals to use extra care because both army and commercial planes are being targeted around the country.
Moscow is also refusing to meet Syrian requests for certain arms shipments — including more of the training planes that President Bashar Assad’s regime has been utilizing as bombers, and intercontinental-range SS-17 ballistic missiles — Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Tuesday. Russia, which has been supplying the Syrian regime with weapons for over four decades, has been criticized in the West for aiding Assad in the bloody 18-month uprising.
Moscow had previously hinted it will not send the regime any more weapons, adding that shipments to date represent its fulfillment of existing arms agreements rather than new arms deals.
Russia is also reported to be contemplating scaling down operations at its military base in Tartus, western Syria, if the security situation becomes critically dangerous.
According to independent Russian news agency Interfax, Russia admitted it had previously considered evacuating personnel from Tartus, but decided the situation was stable enough to stay.
Tartus, Russia’s only naval facility outside the landmass that comprises the former Soviet Union, is referred to as Moscow’s gateway to the Mediterranean. It hosts storage facilities, military specialists, and ships that come to be resupplied.
21/08/12
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia says Western powers are “openly instigating” Syrian opposition groups to take up arms in their fight to unseat President Bashar Assad.
Moscow has been Syria’s key protector throughout the 17-month uprising that evolved into a full-blown civil war, shielding Assad’s regime from international sanctions and providing it with weapons despite an international outcry.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed Wednesday that the West “has done nothing” to urge Assad’s opponents to start a dialogue with his government. It claimed that the “pharisaical” Western approach to the Syrian civil war does not help resolve the conflict that has killed an estimated 19,000 people.
The Kremlin, backed by fellow veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member China, has blocked any plans that would call on Assad to step down.
MOSCOW |
Aug 21 (Reuters) - The Syrian government said on Tuesday foreign military intervention in Syria was “impossible” because it would lead to a conflict beyond the country’s borders.
Deputy Syrian Prime Minister Qadri Jamil, speaking at a news conference in Moscow, appeared to be responding to President Barack Obama’s threat that U.S. forces could act if Syria deployed chemical weapons against rebels.
“Direct military intervention in Syria is impossible because whoever thinks about it … is heading towards a confrontation wider than Syria’s borders,” he said. He said Obama’s threat was for media consumption.
Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi speaks with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (not pictured) during a joint news conference in Khartoum in this May 27, 2012 file photo. (REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)
11/08/2012
The less time spent discussing the news that a replacement for Kofi Annan is going to be made, the better.
But for now, the media will be obliged to deal with the news that Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is being considered for the post, and then likely cover the official announcement of the appointment.
The “news,” as such, boils down to this: Annan’s mandate as the United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria will elapse on the 20th of this month, so if Brahimi is actually selected, he will only serve for a short interval – much more pressing is the question of whether the post itself is renewed.
The move to actually consider appointing a successor to Annan appears to be designed to appease Moscow, and it’s another sign of the failure of the U.N. and the international community. The world’s leading powers are searching for a way to avoid coming up with a solution, if asking Brahimi to step in is what’s on the table.
People will inevitably use shorthand to refer to Brahimi as a veteran diplomat, with a track record of being selected to handle various “hot spots,” such as Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. But would a special envoy ever be named to a place that isn’t a hot spot?
In fact, Brahimi’s record is one of disappointment. He’s the perfect public servant, as he is adept in standing before microphones and making upbeat statements that usually bear little relation to reality.
He has never been particularly creative or energetic in his missions, instead preferring to tell each side what it wants to hear, as his shuttle trips continue, along with the crisis in question.
The Lebanese have their own special memory of Brahimi during the final phases of the Civil War. He had excellent contacts with all sides, and spent his time shuttling between East and West Beirut, never managing to bring about the elusive cease-fire. The Taif Accord was not a Brahimi initiative; he was just the messenger for the arrangement that finally ended the war.
If experience in moving from one waste of time to another is the qualification for continuing Annan’s mission in Syria, Brahimi is perfectly suited for the job.
Annan’s mission died because every side’s stance was well known, and held no hope of a solution for the Syrian crisis. Since the U.N. envoy was named, several thousand people have been killed, and the Syrian public has become certain that the U.N. does not intend to take any serious action to end the bloodshed.
Neither side should welcome Brahimi, if he is tasked with picking up where Annan left off, unless someone, somewhere, makes it clear that the international community believes the crisis in Syria must be solved, and immediately. Otherwise, Brahimi will only have a rising body count to remember from his tenure.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
An empty street is pictured in Salah al- Din neighborhood following clashes between the Free Syrian Army fighters and Syrian Army soldiers in central Aleppo, August 8, 2012.
08/08/2012
A Russian general met reporters at the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday to deny reports that he had been killed by rebel forces in Syria and was shown on television looking well.
“I want to confirm that I am alive and well. I am in good health and I’m living in Moscow,” Vladimir Petrovich Kuzheyev, a reserve general, was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency.
Russian television briefly showed footage of Kuzheyev, in a blue shirt and no tie, at the Defence Ministry.
A Syrian rebel group said it had killed a Russian general working as an adviser to Syria’s defence ministry in an operation in the western Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.
The video, sent to Reuters, showed what the rebels said was a copy of the general’s ID, as issued by the Syrian military, and named him as Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev.
The difference between that spelling and the name of the general who appeared in Moscow may be due to the way the Cyrillic letters were transcribed.
Kuzheyev did not make clear whether he had been in Syria. But Interfax news agency quoted a security source as saying he had been there advising the Syrian Defence Ministry before being transferred to the reserves in 2010. It said he now lived in Moscow.
Russian news agencies quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying the report of his death was a “bald-faced lie.”
Russia is one of the few countries that has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad diplomatically ever since the popular uprising against his rule began 17 months ago. It is believed to have several hundred military personnel in Syria.
The general’s statement that rumours of his death have been exaggerated came as Syrian troops loyal to Assad thrust into a battered rebel stronghold in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, forcing defenders to fall back in fierce fighting.
The intensity of the conflict in Syria’s biggest city and elsewhere suggests that Assad remains determined to cling to power, with support from Iran and Russia, despite setbacks such as this week’s defection of his newly installed prime minister.
“We have retreated, get out of here,” a lone rebel fighter yelled at Reuters journalists as they arrived in Aleppo’s Salaheddine district. Nearby checkpoints that had been manned by rebel fighters for the last week had disappeared.
Syrian state television said government forces had pushed into Salaheddine, killing most of the rebels there, and had entered other parts of the city in a fresh offensive.
It said dozens of “terrorists” were killed in the central district of Bab al-Hadeed, close to Aleppo’s ancient citadel, and Bab al-Nayrab in the southeast.
The military offensive appeared to be the most significant ground attack in Aleppo since rebels seized an arc of the city stretching from the southeast to the northwest three weeks ago.
Joma Abu Ahmed, an activist with the rebel Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that insurgents had fallen back to the nearby neighbourhood of Saif al-Dawla, which was now under fire from army tanks inside Salaheddine and from combat jets.
Some rebels denied retreating and an opposition watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said fighting in the area was the most violent since insurgents first moved in.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
Men search for bodies under rubble of a house, destroyed by a Syrian Air force air strike, in a village of Tel Rafat, about 37 km north of Aleppo, August 8, 2012.
ALEPPO POUNDED
“Fierce clashes are continuing inside Salaheddine district between rebel brigade fighters and the regime forces, which have stormed the district,” the British-based Observatory said.
Abu Firas, a member of the Free Syrian Army, said rebels had left only one building in Salaheddine. “We did not withdraw, our guys are still there and the situation is in our favour.”
The rebel Tawheed Brigade said its fighters had repelled Assad’s forces trying to storm the shattered neighbourhood.
“Yesterday they were able to destroy five tanks and a MiG plane near Aleppo International Airport,” the brigade’s field commander Abdulkader Saleh said in an emailed statement.
As Assad’s forces battle for Aleppo, there has been no let-up in fighting elsewhere in Syria. More than 240 people were killed across the country on Tuesday, 40 of them in the central city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Aleppo, at the heart of Syria’s failing economy, has taken a fearful pounding since the 17-month-old uprising finally took hold in a city that had stayed mostly aloof from the revolt.
Satellite images released by Amnesty International, obtained from July 23 to Aug 1, showed more than 600 craters, probably from artillery shelling, dotting Aleppo and its environs.
“Amnesty is concerned that the deployment of heavy weaponry in residential areas in and around Aleppo will lead to further human rights abuses and grave breaches of international law,” the human rights group said, adding that both sides might be held criminally accountable for failing to protect civilians.
The military’s assaults in Aleppo follow its successful drive to retake neighbourhoods seized by rebels in Damascus after a July 18 bomb attack that killed four of Assad’s closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat.
AP Photo/Shaam News Network, SNN
In this citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN, taken on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012, Syrians attend the funeral procession of a man killed in Idlib province, Syria. Arabic on the flag, left, reads, “no God but Allah,” and on the banner, background right, “Marytr Ahmed Aasaf the hero,” on the banner background second right, reads, “Martyrdom is our way.”
STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL
On Monday Assad suffered the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, defect after only two months in office. Hijab apparently fled to Jordan with his family.
Yet such defections and outside diplomatic pressure seem unlikely to deflect Assad from what has become a bitter struggle for survival between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and a ruling system dominated by the president’s minority Alawite sect, which is an esoteric offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
Assad has firm support from old ally Iran, which sees Syria, along with Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, as a pillar of an “axis of resistance” against the United States and Israel.
Syrian rebels, who have accused Iran of sending fighters to help Assad’s forces, seized 48 Iranians in Syria on Aug. 4, saying they were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said some of the captives were retired soldiers or Revolutionary Guards who were on pilgrimage to a Shi’ite shrine in Damascus, but he denied any of them were on active service.
A Syrian rebel spokesman said on Monday that three of the kidnapped Iranians had been killed in a government air strike and the rest would be executed if the attacks did not stop.
Damascus and Tehran have accused Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states and Turkey, all allies of Western powers, of stoking violence in Syria by supporting the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels.
The violence in Syria has forced tens of thousands of people to flee into neighbouring countries, and about 2,400 refugees, including two generals, arrived in Turkey overnight.
Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency said most of them were women and children from areas near Aleppo and the northwestern city of Idlib, but also included 37 defecting military personnel. Nine were receiving hospital treatment.
Before the latest influx, Turkey said it was sheltering 47,500 Syrians fleeing a conflict which opposition sources say has cost at least 18,000 people since it began in March 2011.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
Men search for bodies under rubble of a house, destroyed by a Syrian Air force air strike, in a village of Tel Rafat, about 37 km north of Aleppo, August 8, 2012.
With files from Hadeel al Shalchi, Reuters
28/07/12
Russia warned Saturday that a “tragedy” was looming in Syria’s second city of Aleppo, but said it was unrealistic to expect the government would stand by when armed rebels were occupying major cities.
“We are persuading the government that they need to make some first gestures,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference alongside his Japanese counterpart.
“But when the armed opposition are occupying cities like Aleppo, where yet another tragedy is brewing as I understand,… it is not realistic to expect that they [the government] will accept this,” Lavrov added.
The Syrian army launched a fight-back against rebels in Aleppo on Saturday, amid concern among Western governments about reprisals against the civilian population of the country’s second city.
“How can you hope that in such a situation, the government will simply reconcile itself and say ‘All right, I was wrong. Come on and topple me, change the regime’?” Lavrov asked rhetorically.
“It’s just not realistic –not because we are holding onto this regime—but it simply doesn’t work,” he said in the news conference in the southern city of Sochi which was broadcast live by state media.
Russia has repeatedly rejected accusations Moscow is backing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the crisis, claiming it has an even-handed approach while rebuking the West for siding with the rebels.
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26/07/2012
It has become clear to many officials in Moscow that the Assad regime cannot restore the pre-rebellion status quo in Syria, forcing them to consider backing away from a longtime client.
The phone line from Moscow to Syria is shaky, giving off static and a faint echo, and it does not help that Russian official Andrei Klimov sounds exhausted. He is cagey about his exact location in Syria, saying only that he is “a few kilometers away from the action.” That could mean any of a number of towns and cities where armed revolutionaries have been fighting the forces of President Bashar Assad for almost a year and a half. In that time, thousands of Syrian civilians have been killed, and dozens of Russian diplomats, officials and military strategists have been flying in and out of Damascus on various pretexts — as election observers, as peace-brokers or morale-boosters for the regime. Some Russians even ostensibly enter Syria as holiday makers. “Let’s just say I’m here for myself, in a personal capacity” says Klimov, who is the vice chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s parliament. Perhaps, but the purpose of his trip this week was also to figure out the regime’s options in the conflict, and Russia’s. “There don’t seem to be any good ones,” Klimov says.
Any hopes that Assad’s forces could bludgeon the rebellion into submission have started to look delusional. Even Russia, one of Assad’s oldest and most stubborn allies, is becoming resigned to his downfall. “I don’t think anyone in the world, including Assad himself, seriously believes that he will be able to control the country for years to come,” says Klimov. “In my view, the ideal situation is if Assad gives control over to someone else, who can maintain the secular nature of the regime and make sure Syria will not become a troublemaker in the region.”
(PHOTOS: The Syrian Arms Race: Photographs by Yuri Kozyrev)
If the Kremlin agrees with this assessment, it has not yet made public that conclusion. President Vladimir Putin has stuck consistently to the view that both sides of the conflict need to negotiate a resolution on their own, and he even suggested on July 23 that forcing Assad to step down would only make matters worse. “The opposition and the current leadership could simply switch sides, with one taking control and the other becoming the opposition, and the civil war will continue for nobody knows how long,” he told a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.
But a little further down the diplomatic hierarchy, the last few months have brought a significant change in tone. Just take Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to the U.N., who in February had mounted a rousing defense of Russia’s refusal to turn its back on the Syrian government. “If you are our ally, we are not going to turn around overnight and say, ‘Well, you know, we’ve had good relations with you over the years, but now, thanks, no thanks, deal with your problems, we are not going to do anything about it,’” Churkin had told U.S. talk show host Charlie Rose. That was a veiled rebuke of Washington’s refusal to prop up its longstanding ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, during the revolution that overthrew him last year. “It’s not our style,” Churkin said at the time. But on Tuesday, July 24, he spoke to Charlie Rose again, and the host pressed him on whether the Russian-Syrian “friendship” had changed in the last six months. This time, Churkin gave a deep sigh before answering. Assad “is not our nephew, you know,” he said. “He’s not related to us, and we’re not attached to his regime in any particular way.”
Like a delinquent younger brother, Syria has nonetheless been causing Russia a great deal of embarrassment. Rarely can a senior Russian official make a public appearances these days, especially in the West, without being grilled on the massacre of civilians in Syria, on Russian arms sales to Assad, or on Russia’s repeated veto of U.N. sanctions against the regime. During a brief press conference on Monday, two of the four questions for Putin were about Syria, and he was visibly annoyed at having to repeat himself, giving his answers in a blunt staccato. On Tuesday, Moscow again had to distance itself from Syrian blunders, after Syria’s foreign ministry spokesman suggested the regime might use chemical weapons, prohibited under international humanitarian law, if it faced attack from abroad. On its website, the Russian Foreign Ministry then gave Damascus a curt reminder to “unwaveringly uphold its international obligations.”
(MORE: After Assad: What’s Next for the Future of Syria?)
Some Russian military officials have also been annoyed by what they see as Assad’s indecisiveness in fighting the rebels. Konstantin Sivkov, a military hawk who served as a strategist for the Russian General Staff between 1995 and 2007, visited Syria in May, ostensibly to monitor the parliamentary elections but mostly to meet with officials. Sivkov was surprised, he says, with how “gentle” Assad has been in crushing the revolution. “Believe me, some of our guys have told Bashar to adopt much harsher methods, carpet bombing, total destruction,” Sivkov told TIME after returning to Moscow. “If that approach was chosen in Syria, there would be no rebels left after one week, and everyone would be happy.”
Instead, Moscow has been put in the awkward position of having to invite the rebels over for talks, which gave perhaps the clearest signal that Russia is looking beyond Assad’s rule. On June 11, a delegation from the Syrian National Council had an audience with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who tried to convince them to negotiate with Assad. But the SNC delegates also felt as if the Russians were sizing them up. “They are looking for partners in the opposition,” Bassma Kodmani, the SNC’s foreign affairs officer told TIME afterward. One of the senior Russian diplomats even tried to express some sympathy with the rebel cause, says Monzer Makhous, an SNC member who took part in the talks. “During one of the breaks, he leaned over to me and said, ‘We know Assad is like Stalin, we know,’” Makhous recalls. To him that only meant one thing: “Some of them are ready, even eager, to abandon him.”
(VIDEO: A Syrian Soldier Claims to Have Witnessed Atrocities)
At the very least, Russia is tired of being looked upon as Assad’s protector. When rumors emerged in the Western press last week that Assad and his family might flee to Moscow, the Russian reaction was furious. “That is not on the table,” U.N. ambassador Churkin fumed on Wednesday during the interview with Rose. Russia has in the past given asylum to the families of embattled despots such as former Serbia president Slobodan Milosevic or former Kyrgyz strongman Askar Akaev, but the Assads are clearly too toxic to receive any such invitations.
Asked whether Russia might take him in, Klimov, the parliamentarian, finally raises his voice over the telephone line from Syria. “Why not Australia,” he demands. “Why don’t they give their fair contribution to the cause of international peace?” Russia has enough image problems as it is, Klimov says, and granting asylum to Assad’s family now “would be piled on top of Russia’s list of supposed sins.” On top of that, anyone that succeeds Assad “will despise Russia 100 times more if we give [him] safe haven,” adds Klimov.
So, much like the rest of the world, Russia is left to hope against hope that Assad will simply agree to step down. That does not mean, however, that Russia will join the rest of the world in pressuring to do so. The only one who can make such a drastic shift in Russian policy is Putin, and he has not caught the changing winds climbing up through his hierarchy. Last week, Russia and China used their veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block sanctions against Assad for the third time. This brought down another wave of condemnation from the West, but Putin did not give an inch in his rhetoric. “At home, this stand-off with the West is great for his image,” says Nikolay Zlobin, head of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the World Security Institute in Washington. Putin’s core electorate still reveres him as a one-man counterweight to the arrogance of the U.S., Zlobin says, and Putin is prepared to suffer a lot more isolation to maintain that image at home. But putting aside domestic Russian politics, “the hope is that some power vacuum will emerge [in Syria] into which Russia might squeeze,” says Zlobin. “So far, that strategy hasn’t worked out so well.” Not for Russia, and certainly not for Syria.
LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron says he plans to hold talks with Russia President Vladimir Putin next week at an Olympic judo match.
Cameron confirmed Thursday that Putin would attend the Olympics — despite earlier doubts over whether he planned to visit the Summer Games.
Putin is a former judo competitor and a devotee of the sport.
Cameron last year used a visit to Moscow to end a freeze on top-level links following the 2006 poisoning death of dissident ex-Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. On his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his killing.
However, Britain last week described Russia’s veto of a U.N. resolution on Syria as “inexcusable and indefensible.”
Cameron is expected to press Putin over ending violence in Syria, and to discuss efforts to boost trade.
MOSCOW — Moscow bristled at the West for its attempts to “put the blame” on Russia for escalating the Syrian civil war, hours after Moscow vetoed a Western-backed United Nations resolution aimed at pressuring President Bashar Assad’s government to end the war.
Russia was adamantly opposed to any mention of Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which could eventually allow the use of force to end the conflict in Syria.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in televised remarks that the attempts of “certain Western countries” to blame Russia for the escalation of the Syrian conflict because of Moscow’s refusal to support the resolution are “absolutely unacceptable.”
Moscow remains a key backer of President Bashar Assad and has for months resisted Western sanctions against his regime.
The Associated Press
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria’s Information Ministry said on Friday that comments by Russia’s ambassador to France that President Bashar al-Assad has accepted leaving power in an orderly way were “completely devoid of truth”.
The ministry statement, flashed on state television, came in response to remarks by Moscow’s envoy to Paris who said that by accepting a recent international declaration which foresaw a transition towards a more democratic Syria, Assad had “accepted to leave, but in an orderly way”.
(Reporting by Dominic Evans, editing by Diana Abdallah)
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