Moscow. Why did Assad come?
On Tuesday evening, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow on a working visit and held both a bilateral meeting with President Vladimir Putin and expanded negotiations, in which the head of state was joined on the Russian side by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
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This was the first foreign visit of the head of Syria since the outbreak of hostilities in this country in 2011.
Official details of the negotiations were announced only today, but left wide space for speculation about the true goals and results of the visit, which many called sudden. Judging by the messages published by the Kremlin press service, “the meeting took place in a warm, friendly atmosphere.”
Putin emphasized the resilience of the Syrian people fighting international terrorism alone, mentioned 4 thousand people from the CIS countries fighting in the ranks of extremists in the Middle East and posing a threat to Russia, and also that the future of Syria should be determined only by the Syrian people.
Two key points of the speech concern the goals of military intervention and the format of a future peace settlement. On the first point, the Russian President stated that “based on the positive dynamics during the hostilities, ultimately a long-term settlement can still be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups.” Those. Russia sees its task as a kind of “forcing peace” on those who are potentially capable of conducting dialogue. The second necessary condition for achieving peace is international consensus, to achieve which Russia is ready to act “in close contact with other world powers and countries in the region that are interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
In turn, Assad thanked for the military and political support, emphasized that it is fully consistent with international law, and cautiously expressed his readiness for dialogue and commitment to the thesis that the future of Syria should be determined by the Syrians.
“Of course, everyone understands that any military action presupposes further political steps. And of course, the common goal for all of us should be what the Syrian people want to see in the future of their country,” said the Syrian leader. He outlined the tasks of the military phase, including Russia’s forceful intervention, quite in the spirit of Russian diplomacy. According to Assad, “terrorism is a real obstacle to a political settlement.”
However, in all these declarations by the parties there is nothing fundamentally new, and without this Assad would hardly have left the country. Probably, we are talking about the fact that at least the first stage of Russian military intervention is over and now, according to the laws of the genre, it is time to return to negotiations in order to find out which of the participants in the process the Russian bombs had a sobering effect on.
The list of countries with whose leaders Vladimir Putin held telephone conversations following his meeting with the President of Syria is quite remarkable. These are the King of Saudi Arabia, the President of Turkey, the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan. Those. all the main regional players whose interests are, one way or another, represented in Syria. It can be assumed that Putin conveyed to them Assad’s readiness for dialogue with those forces that are oriented towards these countries.
The director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vitaly Naumkin, spoke about the prospects for such negotiations in an interview with the Russian BBC service: “At the same time, we have contacts with the opposition. And today, I know, there were contacts. There is talk about possible plans for mediation, there is strong support for [UN Special Envoy for Syria Stefan] de Mistura’s plan, which is supported by both the West and Russia. And some opposition groups refused to support...I believe that these kind of solutions - the de Mistura plan, then Geneva 3 - these horizons are visible today.”
Here it is worth recalling the political process that accompanied the Syrian conflict. Back on June 30, 2012, a meeting was held in Geneva of the heads of foreign affairs of the five members of the UN Security Council (Great Britain, China, Russia, the USA and France), a number of countries in the region (Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar), the European Union, as well as the Secretary General UN. At it, the principles of a political settlement were developed: the creation of a transitional body from members of the Syrian government and representatives of the opposition, changes to the Syrian constitution, holding new elections, etc. In January 2014, the so-called “Geneva 2”, which has already been attended by representatives of the warring sides of the Syrian conflict. No new documents were adopted there, but the negotiation process clearly took a new step forward. And then what happened in Kyiv happened - the shooting of the Maidan, the flight of Yanukovych, the reunification of Crimea, the uprising, the referendum and the war in Donbass. Russia, on the one hand, switched its main attention to the Ukrainian crisis and, on the other, faced collective rejection from the West, which resulted in large-scale sanctions and an attempt at political isolation.
Naturally, in these circumstances there was no time to participate in resolving the Syrian conflict. But in the summer of 2014, ISIS loudly declared itself, defeating the Iraqi army and capturing a third of this country, as well as achieving serious successes in Syria. At the same time, in the Donbass, Ukrainian groups rushing towards Donetsk and Lugansk were defeated and Russia began the so-called. "Minsk process". It took another year for this process to bring the result Russia expected: the freezing of the open conflict in Novorossiya, which provided the preconditions for the gradual normalization of relations with the West. Now, using the need for a peaceful settlement in Syria, Putin is forcing the West to resume dialogue. By raising the stakes with military intervention in the Middle East, Russia has prepared the conditions for the resumption of peace talks, and it is likely that their future format was discussed with Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday evening.
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