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Robert Fisk: Ukraine's future is tied up with Syria's - and Vladimir
Putin is crucial to both
ROBERT FISK
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/robert-fisk-ukraines-future-is-tied-up-with-syrias--and-vladimir-putin-is-crucial-to-both-9145523.html
Friday 21 February 2014
No one in the Middle East will be studying Ukraine's violent tragedy
with more fascination - and deeper concern - than President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria.
He won't care a fig about Obama's critics - who are already chastising
the US President for giving Vladimir Putin the green light to support
the Ukrainian President by flunking his threat to bomb Damascus last
year - nor will Assad care very much about the future political career
of Viktor Yanukovych, whom he happens to know well.
He will instead be dwelling upon the remarkable similarities between
Yanukovych's besieged government and his own Syrian regime, which is
still battling an armed struggle against insurgents. The parallels are
by no means exact, as Assad's enemies claim them to be when they
suggest that he and Yanukovych are "blood brothers". But they are
close enough to persuade the Syrian President and his Talleyrand - the
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem - to study the degree of support
Putin gives to his ally in Kiev.
Without Russian and Iranian support, Assad could scarcely have
survived the past three years of war in Syria. Nor could Yanukovych,
without Moscow's "brotherly" friendship, have withstood opposition
forces - and the EU's flirtation with Ukraine - as long as he has. The
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been using almost the same
words of irritation and anger towards the US over Ukraine as he did
towards America when it was threatening to bomb Syria. If Ukraine
constitutes Russia's eastern defensive wall against Europe, Syria -
fighting against Islamist rebels every bit as ruthless as Putin has
faced in Chechnya - is part of Moscow's southern flank.
LATEST:
UKRAINE PRESIDENT VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH DENIES RESIGNATION CLAIMS AS
SECURITY CHIEFS WITHDRAW FROM CONFLICT WITH PEOPLE
There are other, more intriguing comparisons. The initial Syrian
opposition to Assad - following revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - was
peaceful, although armed men did occasionally appear even in the early
days of the revolt. Then military deserters formed an armed opposition
that was swiftly taken over by radicals more interested in replacing
Assad with a caliphate than the "free Syria" which the opposition
originally demanded. So, too, in Kiev: Yanukovych's opponents found
themselves, after several weeks, uneasily linked to small, right-wing,
neo-Nazi groups who had - in the eyes of their enemies - more in
common with the Ukrainian fascists who helped the Germans in the
Second World War than with the Soviet resistance to Nazi occupation.
Just as Assad's first opponents were idolised by the West - and its
media - as freedom fighters, so were the Ukrainian opposition regarded
as anti-regime rather than anti-constitutional by the same powers and
their newspapers. Once Syria's unrest became weaponised on both sides,
the West and its Arab allies sent military equipment to Assad's
enemies. There is no evidence that the West has done the same for
Yanukovych's opponents, some of whom are now also armed, but be sure
it is only a matter of time before the Russians claim that they have.
There are differences, of course. Yanukovych was elected in a rather
more convincing poll than Assad. Ukraine is not ethnically divided:
Catholicism and Christian Orthodoxy outline the internal borders,
although the Catholic/Croat-Serb/Orthodox civil war in ex-Yugoslavia
does not suggest a happy outcome to Ukraine's suffering. Syria's war
has created areas of conflict in which Sunnis are largely fighting
Shia Alawites, Christians, Druze and others, along with middle-class
Sunnis and Sunni army officers who support the government.
There have, of course, long been contacts between Syria and the
Ukraine. Just before the revolution in Syria, Assad visited Kiev,
signed a free trade agreement and heard Yanukovych praise his country
as Ukraine's "gateway to the Middle East". There are closer ties: the
large number of Syrian students who have been attending Ukrainian
universities and the larger number of Ukrainian citizens born to
Syrian and Soviet parents before the collapse of Communism in eastern
Europe. The older Syrian generals also know Kiev well from their early
training in Soviet military schools.
But the real question for Syria is this: will Putin be able to support
Yanukovych if US and EU pressure continues to build? Is the survival
of Yanukovych worth a new Cold War? If it is, Assad is safe: the
Russians will not abandon Syria since this would demonstrate how
easily they might turn their backs on "Russian" Ukraine. But what if
the US offered Putin carte blanche in the Ukraine in return for his
abandonment of the Assad regime? Obama could once more make his
fraudulent claim that it was American military threats - rather than
Russian mediation - that forced Assad to hand over his chemical
weapons to the UN. And insist that Assad must bow to the transitional
government which the Americans and British and other EU nations have
been trying to foist upon his regime at Geneva.
Assad, however, is a survivor. His Baath party was schooled in
self-preservation by Putin's predecessors. Assad may understand
Yanukovych; yet he knows Putin better. Not for nothing do the
Egyptians admiringly call the Russian leader "the fox". That's why
Putin has sent his personal mediator to Kiev. Washing its hands of
Damascus would do incalculable harm to Moscow's standing in the "new"
Middle East. The Syrians realise Russia is big enough to fight on two
fronts. So Putin will probably just have to go on struggling for his
allies - before Ukraine turns as bloody as Syria - in the hope that
Obama will turn out to be as sanctimonious - and toothless - in Kiev,
as he was over Damascus.
From: Baghdasarian
Putin is crucial to both
ROBERT FISK
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/robert-fisk-ukraines-future-is-tied-up-with-syrias--and-vladimir-putin-is-crucial-to-both-9145523.html
Friday 21 February 2014
No one in the Middle East will be studying Ukraine's violent tragedy
with more fascination - and deeper concern - than President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria.
He won't care a fig about Obama's critics - who are already chastising
the US President for giving Vladimir Putin the green light to support
the Ukrainian President by flunking his threat to bomb Damascus last
year - nor will Assad care very much about the future political career
of Viktor Yanukovych, whom he happens to know well.
He will instead be dwelling upon the remarkable similarities between
Yanukovych's besieged government and his own Syrian regime, which is
still battling an armed struggle against insurgents. The parallels are
by no means exact, as Assad's enemies claim them to be when they
suggest that he and Yanukovych are "blood brothers". But they are
close enough to persuade the Syrian President and his Talleyrand - the
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem - to study the degree of support
Putin gives to his ally in Kiev.
Without Russian and Iranian support, Assad could scarcely have
survived the past three years of war in Syria. Nor could Yanukovych,
without Moscow's "brotherly" friendship, have withstood opposition
forces - and the EU's flirtation with Ukraine - as long as he has. The
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been using almost the same
words of irritation and anger towards the US over Ukraine as he did
towards America when it was threatening to bomb Syria. If Ukraine
constitutes Russia's eastern defensive wall against Europe, Syria -
fighting against Islamist rebels every bit as ruthless as Putin has
faced in Chechnya - is part of Moscow's southern flank.
LATEST:
UKRAINE PRESIDENT VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH DENIES RESIGNATION CLAIMS AS
SECURITY CHIEFS WITHDRAW FROM CONFLICT WITH PEOPLE
There are other, more intriguing comparisons. The initial Syrian
opposition to Assad - following revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt - was
peaceful, although armed men did occasionally appear even in the early
days of the revolt. Then military deserters formed an armed opposition
that was swiftly taken over by radicals more interested in replacing
Assad with a caliphate than the "free Syria" which the opposition
originally demanded. So, too, in Kiev: Yanukovych's opponents found
themselves, after several weeks, uneasily linked to small, right-wing,
neo-Nazi groups who had - in the eyes of their enemies - more in
common with the Ukrainian fascists who helped the Germans in the
Second World War than with the Soviet resistance to Nazi occupation.
Just as Assad's first opponents were idolised by the West - and its
media - as freedom fighters, so were the Ukrainian opposition regarded
as anti-regime rather than anti-constitutional by the same powers and
their newspapers. Once Syria's unrest became weaponised on both sides,
the West and its Arab allies sent military equipment to Assad's
enemies. There is no evidence that the West has done the same for
Yanukovych's opponents, some of whom are now also armed, but be sure
it is only a matter of time before the Russians claim that they have.
There are differences, of course. Yanukovych was elected in a rather
more convincing poll than Assad. Ukraine is not ethnically divided:
Catholicism and Christian Orthodoxy outline the internal borders,
although the Catholic/Croat-Serb/Orthodox civil war in ex-Yugoslavia
does not suggest a happy outcome to Ukraine's suffering. Syria's war
has created areas of conflict in which Sunnis are largely fighting
Shia Alawites, Christians, Druze and others, along with middle-class
Sunnis and Sunni army officers who support the government.
There have, of course, long been contacts between Syria and the
Ukraine. Just before the revolution in Syria, Assad visited Kiev,
signed a free trade agreement and heard Yanukovych praise his country
as Ukraine's "gateway to the Middle East". There are closer ties: the
large number of Syrian students who have been attending Ukrainian
universities and the larger number of Ukrainian citizens born to
Syrian and Soviet parents before the collapse of Communism in eastern
Europe. The older Syrian generals also know Kiev well from their early
training in Soviet military schools.
But the real question for Syria is this: will Putin be able to support
Yanukovych if US and EU pressure continues to build? Is the survival
of Yanukovych worth a new Cold War? If it is, Assad is safe: the
Russians will not abandon Syria since this would demonstrate how
easily they might turn their backs on "Russian" Ukraine. But what if
the US offered Putin carte blanche in the Ukraine in return for his
abandonment of the Assad regime? Obama could once more make his
fraudulent claim that it was American military threats - rather than
Russian mediation - that forced Assad to hand over his chemical
weapons to the UN. And insist that Assad must bow to the transitional
government which the Americans and British and other EU nations have
been trying to foist upon his regime at Geneva.
Assad, however, is a survivor. His Baath party was schooled in
self-preservation by Putin's predecessors. Assad may understand
Yanukovych; yet he knows Putin better. Not for nothing do the
Egyptians admiringly call the Russian leader "the fox". That's why
Putin has sent his personal mediator to Kiev. Washing its hands of
Damascus would do incalculable harm to Moscow's standing in the "new"
Middle East. The Syrians realise Russia is big enough to fight on two
fronts. So Putin will probably just have to go on struggling for his
allies - before Ukraine turns as bloody as Syria - in the hope that
Obama will turn out to be as sanctimonious - and toothless - in Kiev,
as he was over Damascus.
From: Baghdasarian