Putin’s premature withdrawal

Putin’s announcement of withdrawing ‘the main part’ of Russian forces from Syria has caused a reaction out of proportion to the significance of the event.

Once again Putin has caught Western intelligence unawares, which immediately produced a choir of self-laceration in our media, harmonised with barely concealed admiration for the KGB thug.

That Western intelligence services have always been inept when gathering and processing information about Russia is true. Not a single important post-1917 development (indeed the 1917 Bolshevik coup itself) has been predicted. Not a single one has been properly understood. For example, the all-important Nazi-Soviet pact was discarded as even a remote possibility until the day after it happened.

Closer to our own time, Western intelligence services failed to predict Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons, Khrushchev’s faux de-Stalinisation, Soviet interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, the launch of the first satellite, the installation of missiles on Cuba, the whole ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ offensive, the ‘collapse’ of the Soviet Union.

And since the KGB junta fronted by Col. Putin took over Russia and began acting with the perfidy characteristic of history’s most murderous organisation, our intelligence services have consistently been caught with their trousers down.

Putin’s attack on Georgia came out of the blue, as did his anschluss of the Crimea, aggression against the Ukraine and, more relevant to yesterday’s announcement, his move into Syria. His supposed move out of Syria unsurprisingly wasn’t predicted either.

Yet everything about the withdrawal smacks of KGB disinformation. For example, ‘the main part’ of the Russian force in Syria means nothing unless we know how many Russian soldiers there are in the country and how many of them are leaving.

Since we don’t possess this information, the withdrawal may well be as bogus as the supposed withdrawal of some Soviet forces out of Afghanistan six months after the incursion began. It later turned out that going home were only AA and missile units, which had been found unnecessary. The remaining forces were strong enough to kill about a million Afghans before retreating.

Since Russian ground forces are only a few thousand strong, they perform mostly police and training functions. The bulk of Putin’s operations are bombing raids, and those can proceed unabated from Russian bases in Dagestan or, if cruise missiles are used, Russia herself.

Putin declared victory. The Russian troops, he announced, had achieved all their objectives. Again, we don’t know what the objectives were, and various guesses have already been proved wrong.

Even accurate observations haven’t led to credible conclusions. For example, it was hard even for Western intelligence not to notice that the Russians pounded mostly not ISIS positions but the so-called ‘moderate’ Arab areas (I met a moderate Muslim once. His name was Asif.).

And unlike Allied forces, the Russians aren’t using primarily precision weapons. Their stock in trade is indiscriminate bombings of schools, hospitals and private dwellings. Hence their claim of having killed 2,000 militants is outright mendacious. What did they do, check the IDs of the patients killed in hospital wards?

So was propping up Assad the strategic objective now fulfilled? Clearly not. Assad’s troops, with the Russians playing the role of his air force, have only made modest gains. For example they’ve failed to capture Aleppo, which advance was already touted as a major future success.

Over the last year Syrian troops have made practically no territorial gains at the expense of ISIS in Syria. ISIS lost territory mainly in the parts of Iraq inhabited by the Kurds, and encouraging Kurdish separatism clearly is one of Putin’s objectives.

There are many others, yet none of them has anything to do with his supposed commitment to Assad much mooted in our press. Syria will become Russia’s client state now no matter who’s nominally in charge there, Assad or anyone else. Reconstruction contracts will all go to Russian firms, what with Syria already owing Russia some $100 billion.

At the same time, Russia has secured massive contracts in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, mostly armaments but also the odd nuclear plant. Playing both ends against the middle with the sleight of hand well drilled at the KGB academy, the Russians are also arming Iran, sworn enemy of Sunnite powers.

The same stratagem is used towards Israel, whose actions against Hezbollah are coordinated with the Russians, while the latter are training and arming the very same terrorists.

It’s also conceivable that the Russians are twisting the Saudis’ arm to curb their oil output, thereby ratcheting up the prices whose low levels are destroying what’s left of Russia’s economy.

So why the withdrawal? For one thing, Russia’s apparent aim of creating a separatist Kurdish area has already brought her in conflict with Turkey and potentially NATO, whose member Turkey is. For all his bellicose language Putin isn’t ready to take NATO on in a standing battle, and he’d rather not risk one.

Then again, the withdrawal was timed with the opening of Geneva peace talks, in which Putin wants to play a major role, while retaining maximum flexibility in continuing his bombing campaign if necessary.

Above all, the KGB colonel wants to re-establish himself as a major player on the world arena, rather than the street bully he really is. This objective has to be at odds with the West’s, for readmitting a manifestly evil regime to a seat at the civilised table will befoul the table irredeemably.

This is what’s worth talking about, not the cynical and probably bogus PR exercise that the withdrawal of some Russian troops really is.