These “military adventures,” as Middle East expert Wolfgang Pusztai calls them in an interview with KURIER, had the West as their actual target. “Russia wants to be in Africa undermining European and American influence,” he says. The main issue is access to raw materials that the Kremlin wants to deny the West – keyword uranium in Niger.
Negotiations with the rebels
If Russia loses the naval base in Tartus and the air base near Latakia, operations in Africa would be significantly more complicated. “The normal logistical route leads from Russia via Latakia to Libya and then on to Africa,” says Pustzai. If Russia can no longer use the bases and Syrian airspace, the Kremlin would have to take a complicated detour via Iran – or reach an agreement with Turkey to allow military overflights. However, given Turkey’s NATO membership, this is quite unlikely.
The Kremlin is doing everything it can to hold the bases. On Monday it was said from Moscow that the rebels had not driven the Russians out of the bases; Other rumors were circulating online: Russian warships are said to have already left Tartus and the Hmeimim air base is effectively cut off. Even if there is no confirmation of this, even the usually well-informed Russian military bloggers were anything but confident about the whereabouts of the Russians. The Kremlin had already begun negotiating with the rebels before Assad’s fall. “But what someone in high office has decided is completely irrelevant locally,” it says Rybar.
Not good news for Ukraine
In Russia they try to reinterpret this as best as they can. A withdrawal would not be a failure, but a long-planned tactical maneuver by the Kremlin, because the forces would now be freed up for Ukraine, the tabloid said Moskowskij Komsomolets.
In fact, this may not be wrong, because according to experts there are probably no more than 5,000 forces tied up in Syria. When it comes to negotiations, this is still not good news for Kiev: “To a certain extent, Putin lost Syria because of the Ukraine war,” says Kremlin expert Tatyana Stanovaya. “This will only increase his unwillingness to compromise.”