... one or in other words from risk based approach to opportunity-oriented
Since the start of the Russian military operation in Syria in 2015, the configuration of political forces in the Middle East began to undergo major changes. The dominance of the United ... ... the desire of the states of the region to diversify their ties does not mean a lack of desire to cooperate with the EU and the USA. Regional elites can use their contacts with Moscow to get greater benefits from the West by showing that they have alternative ...
... the profound systemic crisis is yet to be found. Most countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) have launched the needed socioeconomic reforms, albeit belatedly, but outcomes are difficult to predict. In other parts of the Arab world (Syria, Libya, Yemen), civil war has been the means of resolving questions of power. In these countries there is an inextricable tangle of ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ governments, numerous militias, terrorist groups, and foreign military contingents,...
Russia should not necessarily wait for the Europeans to join its rebuilding efforts
As the United States eyes
new sanctions
on Syria, Russia increasingly finds it needs to work out solutions that would nonetheless push forward the post-conflict reconstruction ... ... differences
in this area. While Russia sees Syrian reconstruction mainly in terms of rebuilding the damaged physical infrastructure, European Union states link the reconstruction efforts to political transition.
Meanwhile in Moscow there are two competing views ...
...
Iran’s critical role in shaping the security agenda of the Middle East is indisputable. No matter what we discuss — the Syrian settlement, state-building in Iraq, civil war in Yemen or political dynamics in Lebanon —, Iran remains the big elephant ... ... less prone to condemn so-called “destabilizing” activities in the region and is in any case not prepared to establish any causal effect between these matters and the implementation of the JCPOA. However, Russia and Europe do share some obvious common ...
It is becoming increasingly more difficult for Moscow to retain its position as an honest, if not completely independent, broker
On February 14, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran will meet in Sochi to discuss Syria and hold separate bilateral meetings. Recently, new developments have emerged that could prove dangerous if each state pursues its own hidden agenda. The three states depend on the Astana format for settling the Syrian issue.
By 2019, the Syrian ...
...
Judging from the new State Armament Program for 2018-2027, which Putin signed off in December 2017, many of the most ambitious and expensive aerospace and naval weapons programs have effectively been pushed back to the mid-2020s or even beyond 2027.
In Syria, Putin will keep trying to convert the military success of the Russian intervention into political and diplomatic gains, but he will be hampered by the growing Syrian involvement of the United States. Unlike Moscow, Washington has no constructive ...
... issues include allegations of possible Russian connections into European politics, or perhaps also the other way around (we never hear about that). And the Skripal case. All these are secondary and solvable, issues, once the above hard-points are solved.
Syria
Andrey Kortunov:
Russia: the Power Broker in the Middle East?
If it is at all possible to speak of any “winner” in such an ugly civil-war, with perhaps 400,000 dead people and 5 million refugees out of 22 million previous inhabitants, it must ...
Russia and its partners can arguably win the war, but they cannot win the peace in Syria
Historically, the Middle East has never been a Russia’s strategic priority comparable to Europe, the North-East Pacific ... ... two states; each of the parties tries to pull Moscow to its side of the conflict. The risks of alienating either Teheran or Jerusalem, or even both of them, are on the rise.
Finally, if Damascus finally has a complete military victory and regains control ...
... of the collective West with the addition of new members from Eastern Europe. But the European Union is certainly a very important pillar of any world order. As for the Russian... ... talk about NATO’s involvement in Libya, but then there is Russia’s involvement in Syria and that has also created millions of refugees.
S.Lavrov:
Yes, but I would challenge... ... legitimate government that is also the government responsible for killing of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, making millions homeless. “A gas killing animal”, as...
... Lavrov, appeasement of the West at the expense of Russian national interests is over.
On the contrary, Russia’s operation in Syria, which began in the fall of 2015, poses a fresh challenge to the U.S.-dominated order. Moscow has broken a post–Cold War ... ... EU-imposed sanctions and restoring a modicum of economic relations with Western Europe.
Russia also hoped that developments in the European Union, including Brexit and elections in France, would lead to a less Atlanticist, less Russoskeptic EU. These hopes ...
