Russian firepower helped keep the Syrian president in power - but in a matter of days, Moscow's Syria project unravelled.
Remember Putin's two-day "special operation" to capture Ukraine? It is now into Day 1,020 if I counted correctly. And that has involved Russia suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Putin's adventure in Syria over the past decade has yielded another failure. Instead of making Russia look like a superpower, these engagements show that it is merely a miserable muddled meddler.
For nearly a decade it was Russian firepower that had kept Bashar al-Assad in power. Until the extraordinary events of the last 24 hours. Damascus has fallen, Syria's president has been toppled and has, reportedly, flown to Moscow. Quoting a source in the Kremlin, Russian news agencies and state TV reported that Russia has granted Assad and his family asylum "on humanitarian grounds". In a matter of days, the Kremlin's Syria project has unravelled in the most dramatic circumstances, with Moscow powerless to prevent it. [ ... ] The fall of the Assad regime is a blow to Russia's prestige. By sending thousands of troops in 2015 to shore up President Assad, one of Russia's key objectives had been to assert itself as a global power. It was Vladimir Putin's first major challenge to the power and dominance of the West, away from the former Soviet space.
Russia left behind an air base at Khmeimim and a naval base at Tartus. And in the near future we are likely to hear of smaller cantonments.
We may also be hearing how deeply Russia was involved in internal repression by Syria's al-Assad régime.
Russia looks decreasingly like a place other countries would wish to emulate.
Bashar al-Assad was the sort of person Putin likes to do business with – a mass-murdering autocrat. This report from Amnesty International is from 2017.
Syria: Human slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria
