Russia in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Art of Balancing

... engagement in Syria in the autumn of 2015 had a significant ‘pedagogical’ dimension—after a spectacular Western failure in Libya and a less than impressive US performance in Iraq, Vladimir Putin clearly intended to teach the West how to ‘fix’ a MENA country. Particularly in the aftermath of the acute crisis in and around Ukraine, it was very important for the Kremlin to demonstrate that in the Eastern Mediterranean Russia could become not a part of the problem, but rather a part of the solution....