Russia’s airstrikes helping Putin flex muscle where Obama falters

Moscow: Whatever effect Russia’s airstrikes are having on the ground in Syria, their impact at home is clear: They prove to Russians that their country is showing up the United States and reclaiming its rightful place as a global power.

So far, Russia’s intervention in Syria has served President Vladimir Putin’s goals. The potential danger, military analysts say, lies down the road. To frame and illustrate Putin’s success in Syria, state television stations provided a series of seemingly scripted news broadcasts over the weekend.

The national pride generated by Russia’s show of force in Syria also has helped the Kremlin compensate for Russia’s sputtering economy. More directly, Russia’s military intervention has allowed Moscow to defend its strategic interests in Syria, where it has a naval base on the Mediterranean coast and a longtime ally in President Bashar Assad.

The Russian airstrikes that began Wednesday have mainly targeted central and northwestern Syria, strategic regions that are the gateway to Assad’s strongholds in the capital, Damascus, and along the coast.

Russia says it is targeting the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, but at least some of the strikes appear to have hit Western-backed rebel factions.

Political commentator Yulia Latynina said Russia wants to see the destruction of the Islamic State. “Only this will allow Putin to achieve the desired result, to show Obama how he, Putin, a real man, succeeded where Obama was disgraced,” she said in her program Saturday night on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Military analysts say that for the airstrikes to be effective they need to be followed up on the ground. Putin has ruled out sending Russian combat troops and said Russia would be supporting offensive operations by the Syrian army.

Georgy Mirsky, a widely respected Middle East scholar, said the bigger worry was that the airstrikes would kill not only militants but Sunni Arab civilians, motivating Islamic terrorists to turn their sights on Russia and making it easier for them to recruit volunteers within Russia. Most of Russia’s Muslims are Sunnis, including those in Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus, where there is a simmering Islamic insurgency.

It is these radical Islamists, he said, who pose the real threat to Russia: “America will not send terrorists to carry out bombings in Moscow, but these fanatics easily could.”

AP