Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, December 9, 2024, p. 20
Moscow. The sudden change of government in Syria, currently in the hands of insurgent groups, and the fall of Bashar al Assad, who remained in power, in part, due to military aid from Russia, took the Kremlin by surprise, which yesterday , via the Foreign Ministry, reported that the overthrown ruler decided to give up power and leave the country.
Hours later, the official TASS news agency announced that the defenestrated Al Assad and his family are in Moscow as political exiles for humanitarian reasonswhich put an end to rumors spread by the British agency Reuters that he had died as a result of a plane crash or the downing of his plane.
With deep concern we are following the dramatic events in Syria. As a result of negotiations between Bashar al Assad and a series of participants in the armed conflict, he made the decision to resign as president and leave the country, giving instructions to carry out a peaceful transition of power.indicates in its core part the statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Although Russia did not participate in those negotiationsrecognizes the text, is in contact with all Syrian opposition groups and urges them to avoid the use of violence when solving the problems of controlling the country through political means.
Moscow offered its support to inclusive political dialogue, which is based on resolution 2254 of the United Nations Security Council approved unanimously (in 2015 and which lays the foundations for a ceasefire and a political solution in Syria) and, in this sense, asked to respect the opinion of all ethnic and confessional groups in Syrian society.
The chancellery concludes: Measures are taken to help Russian citizens in Syriaat the same time that the Russian military bases there are in a state of high combat readiness and, therefore, There is currently no serious threat to your safety..
For Russia, the end of the Al Assad family dynasty, with father Hafez and son Bashar, who ruled Syria for the last half century, is not only a serious blow to the image of President Vladimir Putin in the sense that he now He dropped an ally of his, although he saved his life by giving him political asylum, after in September 2015, in a similar context, he avoided the debacle of his government by intervening militarily in the internal conflict in Syria.
Also, and above all, the fall of a Syrian regime close to Moscow raises serious doubts about the future of the military installations that Russia maintains in that strategic area of the Mediterranean, the Hmeimin airfield and the Tartus naval base, not to mention the relatively small groups of soldiers who protected oil fields and other strategic assets of the Syrian government in many places in its territory.
Most of the warships in Tartus left the base on December 3, supposedly to participate in maneuvers in the Mediterranean, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said recently, and according to satellite images yesterday at the Tartus airfield. Russian planes could still be seen in the Latakia region.
In relation to the thorny issue of military bases in Syria, General (ret.) Andrei Kartapolov, pro-government deputy and chairman of the Duma Defense Committee – the same one who recently amended the letter to the Deputy Minister of Defense, Anna Tsiviliova, Putin’s second-degree niece, asking her to Do not mention that figure again, it is a state secret: that there are at least 48 thousand requests from relatives of missing in the Ukrainian war whose bodies have not been identified – admitted that The situation in Syria is complicated, but Russia will know how to consistently defend its interests and, in that sense, there is nothing to fear regarding our military bases..
Recalling the humiliating conditions of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany and other countries of the so-called socialist bloc, Kartapolov urged not make any gesture of good will.
A blow for everyone
Another Russian legislator, this time from the upper house, Konstantin Kosachov, vice president of the Senate, wrote on Telegram that what happened in Syria It is a very hard blow for everyone without exception..
Those who do not even share the Kremlin’s worldview agree that it is a very hard blow, such as political scientist Aleksandr Baunov, now in exile, but from another angle they affirm that Putin received his Afghanistanremembering the mockery with which the official spokesmen celebrated the embarrassing withdrawal of United States troops from the Asian country.