In Russia, Even Putin’s Critics Are OK With His Syria Policy
On Monday afternoon, Italian premier Mario Monti and Russian president Vladimir Putin convened a small press conference in the slanting, gold light coming off the Black Sea. They had just met to discuss the European economic crisis as well as energy (Italy is Russia’s second biggest gas client), but they also touched on the deepening conflict in Syria.
“We do not want the situation to develop along the lines of a bloody civil war and for it to continue for who knows how many years, like in Afghanistan,” Putin said, standing with his perfect posture in a slate-gray summer suit. “We want there to be peace.” Russia does not want to see the establishment and the opposition to simply switch sides and keep fighting, Putin went on. Russia’s position remains unchanged, commented the reporter of Channel One, the country’s biggest (and state controlled) television channel. “The only way out of the crisis is through negotiations.”
The insistent, demonstrative reasonableness of Putin’s quote was more than bluster; it was also a reflection of how most Russians, including the Russian press, understand their country’s role in Syria’s ongoing civil war.
If the West has come to see Russia as the ornery spoiler in Syria, as the last ally of the cruel and increasingly embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad, Russia sees itself as the last sane person left in the room, the one geopolitical actor able to put emotion and cliché aside in favor of rational, balanced thought. Glancing at Russian press coverage of the Syrian conflict—and it is, in the Russian perspective a “crisis”—one will notice that it does not get nearly the same kind of coverage here as it does in the Western press. “Why does this peripheral country get so much attention?” Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in World Affairs exclaimed when we spoke. “It just is not considered something extremely significant here.”