{"id":1507452,"date":"2024-12-12T02:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T07:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1507452"},"modified":"2024-12-12T02:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T07:45:00","slug":"whats-state-funded-russian-media-saying-about-syrias-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/whats-state-funded-russian-media-saying-about-syrias-regime-change\/1507452\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s (State-Funded) Russian Media Saying About Syria’s Regime Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s (State-Funded) Russian Media Saying About Syria’s Regime Change?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Publicly financed Russian media\u2019s reaction to Syria\u2019s regime change is a lot different than most could have expected after they earlier warned that this could lead to an unprecedented terrorist crisis. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Those concerns were warranted since Turkish-backed Harat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is designated as a terrorist group and was originally part of Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, these outlets\u2019 reactions have been surprisingly calm, thus suggesting a desire to play everything by ear for the sake of retaining Russian influence there.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

RT published two very thought-provoking op-eds since the Syrian Arab Army\u2019s (SAA)\u00a0epic collapse<\/a>\u00a0and Assad\u2019s\u00a0cowardly flight from Damascus<\/a>\u00a0that are worth reviewing in this context. <\/strong>The first is by Murad Sadygzade, who\u2019s President of the Middle East Studies Center and Visiting Lecturer at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and answers the question of \u201cWhy did Syria fall so fast and what happens next?<\/a>\u201d He began by drawing attention to foreign meddling but then dove into domestic details.<\/p>\n

This approach is noteworthy since it had hitherto been very rare for publicly financed Russian media to talk about the Assad Government\u2019s many shortcomings, but Sadygzade candidly addressed them:<\/p>\n

\u201cA key turning point came when Assad lost the support of even those who had stood by him for years. Economic hardships, sanctions, and a growing sense of hopelessness led many to believe that change was inevitable, even if it came at the cost of destruction. The strategic mistake of the ruling elite \u2013 betting on a military solution to the conflict while ignoring political dialogue, both domestically and internationally \u2013 ultimately left Assad vulnerable to determined and well-organized adversaries.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The second RT op-ed is a republication of an article by Gazeta.ru political analyst Vitaly Ryumshin under the title \u201cAssad\u2019s collapse was coming \u2013 everyone just looked away<\/a>\u201d.<\/strong><\/em> Here are the highlights:<\/p>\n

\u201cAssad\u2019s Syria had been rotting from within for years. The country was locked in a perpetual humanitarian and economic crisis, with 90% of Syrians living in poverty and widespread malnutrition. Desperate families took out loans just to buy food but couldn\u2019t pay them back. Power outages crippled even Damascus, sometimes leaving the capital dark for 20 hours a day. Electricity prices soared by up to 585% in the spring of 2024 alone, pushing an already destitute population deeper into despair.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Assad government offered no solutions \u2013 only mounting repression. Under crushing sanctions, Damascus couldn\u2019t secure foreign loans, and with its oil fields under US-Kurdish control, there was nothing left to trade. Even Syria\u2019s illicit drug trade, once a lifeline, couldn\u2019t plug the gaping holes in state finances. Profits disappeared into the pockets of warlords and traffickers, not the state treasury.<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Assad\u2019s underpaid, demoralized army, bled dry by years of civil war, continued to disintegrate. For a time, Iranian proxies like Hezbollah propped up his forces, but by 2024, they\u2019d shifted their attention to fighting Israel. Attempts to draw Russia further into Syria\u2019s quagmire fell flat. Moscow, busy elsewhere, had no interest in bailing Assad out.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ryumshin also twice referred to the Assad Government as a \u201cregime\u201d in back-to-back sentences, writing that \u201cIn the south and southeast, dormant rebel cells rose up, striking a final blow against Assad\u2019s hollowed-out regime. On Sunday, opposition forces stormed Damascus from several directions. Bashar al-Assad, whose regime withstood over a decade of civil war, finally fell from power.\u201d It\u2019s a stunning change in RT\u2019s editorial policy that they didn\u2019t replace that previously taboo word before republishing.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they listened to what their senior correspondent and veteran Syrian War journalist Murad Gazdiev told them in an interview, where he concluded that \u201cAssad\u2019s govt fell due to corruption, lack of organization, and motivation<\/a>\u201d. He has a decade worth of experience covering this conflict so his post-mortem on Assad\u2019s Government should be taken very seriously. Publicly financed TASS also\u00a0editorialized the word \u201cregime\u201d into a headline<\/a>\u00a0about Syria on Tuesday in a related visible change of policy.<\/p>\n

The day prior, they described HTS\u2019 chief as an \u201carmed opposition leader<\/a>\u201d without referencing the US\u2019 $10 million bounty on his head for terrorist-related crimes or even his connection to such groups. TASS also reported how \u201cSyrian Embassy operating as usual under new flag<\/a>\u201d, which implies Moscow\u2019s tacit (key qualifier) acceptance of this regime change in the sense of continuing to recognize those Syrian diplomats as official representatives of the new ruling arrangement who are allowed to keep working.<\/p>\n

Their press review of Vedomosti\u2019s article about the future of Russia\u2019s military bases in Syria adds context to why that tacit acceptance appears to have been made<\/strong>. Ibragim Ibragimov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences\u2019 Institute of World Economy and International Relations,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0them that \u201cI don\u2019t exclude that a new format of military-technical cooperation will appear soon and that Russian military instructors will play a role in establishing a new Syrian army.\u201d That would be an intriguing turn of events.<\/p>\n

It might not be as far-fetched as some think provided that there\u2019s political will and the right conditions to make it work, the latter of which would require the non-terrorist anti-government opposition (NTAGO) to separate itself from terrorist-designated groups and figures. Moreover, such groups and figures would have to prove that they\u2019ve changed their ways, just like the\u00a0Taliban<\/a>\u00a0have sought to do since returning to power in mid-2021 to regain Russia\u2019s trust and try to have restrictions on cooperation with them lifted.<\/p>\n

To that end, meaningful progress on implementing\u00a0UNSC Resolution 2254<\/a>\u00a0from December 2015 would go a long way, which Assad refused to do for reasons beyond the scope of this analysis. The\u00a0Russian-written draft constitution<\/a>\u00a0that was unveiled during the first Astana Summit in January 2017 could also be revived to serve as a model for the constitutional reform that this resolution obligates Syria to undertake. Assad had unofficially rubbished it\u00a0due to the concessions<\/a>\u00a0that he was asked to make.<\/p>\n

Judging by what the head of the Syrian armed opposition delegation to the Astana talks told\u00a0Sputnik<\/a>\u00a0and the president of the Syrian Negotiation Commission told\u00a0RT<\/a>, these two internationally recognized NTAGO platforms want to retain positive relations with Russia.<\/strong> That could explain why the leader of the new interim Syrian government, Mohammed al-Bashir, was described by\u00a0TASS<\/a>\u00a0as someone who \u201cjoined anti-government armed units supported by foreign funding\u201d instead of the previously typical foreign proxy.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on publicly financed Russian media\u2019s reports about Syria\u2019s regime change, it therefore appears as though the Kremlin signaled to those outlets within its \u201csphere of influence\u201d to withhold publishing worst-case scenario forecasts for now while their country\u2019s diplomats try to avert an even worse crisis. <\/strong>The worst might still be yet to come, but it hasn\u2019t yet unfolded and might still be prevented, hence the importance of them remaining calm and reciprocating the new ruling arrangement\u2019s positive messages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 12\/11\/2024 – 21:45<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/whats-state-funded-russian-media-saying-about-syrias-regime-change<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s (State-Funded) Russian Media Saying About Syria’s Regime Change? Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack, Publicly financed Russian media\u2019s reaction to Syria\u2019s regime change is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1507453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1507452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1507453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}