M. Singh & J. White: Expanded Syria Presence Would Carry Big Risks for Russia/A. Borshchevskaya: Russia in Syria/T. Karasik: Why is Russia in Syria now?

Expanded Syria Presence Would Carry Big Risks for Russia
Michael Singh and Jeffrey White/Wall Street Journal/September 8, 2015

Rather than recalling past glories, Russia’s reportedly escalating support for Assad may prove to be a reminder of why they faded in the first place.In July 1972, Soviet forces were ordered out of Egypt by Anwar Sadat, signaling the end of serious military involvement in the region by Moscow. Now, forty-three years later, Russian troops are returning. According to the New York Times, “Russia has sent a military advance team to Syria and has transported prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to an airfield near Latakia, according to American intelligence analysts.” The Times adds that “Russia has also delivered a portable air traffic station to the airfield and has filed military overflight requests through September.” The reports follow closely on the heels of similar allegations in recent weeks, including reports of new arms, and even combat troops. U.S. military officials said Tuesday that Russia has moved new personnel, planes and equipment into Syria in recent days.

That Moscow is heavily involved in the Syria conflict is not itself news. Russian military links with the Assad regime go back many years — the USSR, and then Russia, long operated a naval station at the Syrian port of Tartus, and Moscow has provided Assad with what Russian President Vladimir Putin recently described as “serious” amounts of military equipment and training to prosecute its civil war. Russia has also had a prominent diplomatic role in the Syrian conflict. It has shielded the Assad regime from pressure by vetoing a number of UN Security Council resolutions on the conflict. More recently Moscow has become the nexus of diplomatic activity aimed at ending the fighting; Russia has hosted a parade of Western and Middle Eastern officials including both Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, as well as two rounds of multilateral discussions.

The proximate aim of Russian policy seems clear: to protect the Assad regime, for decades an ally of Moscow’s and in more recent years one of Russia’s last remaining channels of influence in the Middle East. Mr. Putin has criticized the Syrian regime and acknowledged that “a process of political change” is needed, but has steadfastly refused to withdraw his support for Assad or suggest that he should be replaced as part of any political transition. Russian weapons, ammunition, and spare parts keep Assad’s war machine running. Regime strongholds have come under increasing pressure in recent months from rebel forces, which likely contributed to Moscow’s decision to step up its support. Beyond any direct military effect, the Russian moves may signal to rebels, and their foreign backers, the depth of Moscow’s commitment to the regime, thus dampening their hope for a military victory and bolstering their incentive to accept a resolution on terms preferred by Russia and Mr. Assad.

Mr. Putin has asserted that Russian aid to Syria is part of an effort to fight “extremism and terrorism.” While Russia’s motivation to help Mr. Assad is doubtless reinforced by the presence of jihadist groups among the Syrian opposition, Russian aid to Damascus predated the rise of ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra and puts Moscow at odds not only with Islamists but with the entire Syrian opposition. Indeed, the Syrian regime, with Russia’s support, has even indiscriminately targeted civilians, inflicting a tremendous humanitarian toll and likely fueling rather than stemming the rise of jihadism. The Russian gambit, however, likely has wider aims. The involvement of Russian forces on the side of the regime would complicate any American military action against Mr. Assad, including a no-fly zone. Like the impending sale of the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran, it has the effect not only of enhancing Russian influence but limiting US options and influence at a time where Moscow may calculate that Washington is unlikely to respond sharply.

Finally, direct Russian military involvement would be consistent with Moscow’s recent, revanchist pattern of behavior globally. Mr. Putin has spoken of restoring Russia’s faded glory, and has made good on his musings in Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and via the increasingly aggressive behavior of Russian air and naval forces around the world. So too would deeper involvement in the Middle East hearken to Russia’s past. Whatever Moscow’s motivation, expanded Russian military involvement in Syria, should it come to pass, seems likely to be a lose-lose proposition for the United States and Russia. For Washington, it would seriously complicate any contemplated military pressure on the Syrian regime, and lend Assad renewed confidence that would make more remote any diplomatic settlement acceptable to the U.S. and the Syrian opposition. Russia, meanwhile, will be further yoked to a vulnerable and needy ally while antagonizing regional powers such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. An increased Russian presence may itself become a target for Syrian opposition and jihadist elements, with resulting Russian casualties. Rather than recalling past glories, the move may prove a reminder of why they faded in the first place.

**Michael Singh is the Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and managing director at The Washington Institute. From 2005 to 2008, he worked on Middle East issues at the National Security Council. Jeffrey White is a defense fellow at the Institute and a former senior defense intelligence officer. This article originally appeared on the Wall Street Journal blog “Think Tank.”

Russia in Syria (Part 1): Declining Military Capabilities Won’t Hold Moscow Back
Anna Borshchevskaya/The Washington Institute./September 8, 2015

Although the reported intervention in Syria may spread Russia’s armed forces too thin, the Kremlin seems poised to grow even more aggressive in its near abroad. According to photo evidence republished in a September 8 Daily Mail report, Russian troops have been on the ground in Syria since at least April. Other reports of Moscow’s increased military buildup there have mentioned additional deliveries of advanced weaponry to the Assad regime, a military advance team, and prefabricated housing units sent to an airfield near Latakia. On September 4, President Vladimir Putin described the talk of Russian troops in Syria as “premature,” but he confirmed that Moscow continues to provide serious assistance through training, weaponry, and equipment. Whatever its current extent, Russia’s increased involvement in Syria raises questions about its overall military capabilities.

LARGE-SCALE MILITARY REFORMS
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian military entered a sharp state of decline, suffering from low morale, training/discipline problems, lack of modern equipment, and massive corruption. The 2008 invasion of Georgia highlighted what Congressional Research Service described in August 2011 as “large-scale Russian military operational failures”; indeed, Moscow’s forces prevailed only with difficulty over a considerably smaller opponent.

In response, then-defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov unveiled major military reforms in October 2008, aiming to reorganize the army’s structure and chain of command, reduce its size, and create a lean, modern, and competent force by 2020. Russia then began its largest military buildup since the Soviet collapse, with major annual increases in defense spending that are slated to continue until 2020. According to the Economist, the most substantial of these changes is a ten-year, $720 billion weapons modernization program launched in 2010. As the reforms gained traction, the Kremlin also took an increasingly aggressive posture abroad, resuming bomber patrols in the Atlantic and Pacific, extending leases on military bases in Armenia and Tajikistan, launching plans for a new air base in Belarus, and increasing the size and sophistication of its annual joint military exercises with China. According to the Moscow Times, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, its troops were “unmistakably better trained and equipped” than they had been during the 2008 Georgia campaign (the troops in Crimea were also the Russian army’s elite).

UNSUSTAINABLE SPENDING
Despite the increased expenditures and signs of success, a March 2014 Congressional Research Service report indicated that “mismanagement, changes in plans, corruption, manning issues, and economic constraints” continued to complicate Moscow’s military reforms. Moreover, Russian experts have raised concerns that the massive spending is being conducted at the expense of economic growth and much-needed investments in infrastructure and education. In a May 2015 article, Russian economist Sergei Guriev concluded that the Kremlin cannot afford its current military expenditures, noting that budget data for the first three months of the year showed military expenditures were more than double their budgeted amount, exceeding 9 percent of the quarterly GDP. “In other words, Russia has already spent more than half of its total military budget for 2015. At this rate, its reserve fund will be emptied before the end of the year,” he wrote. Similarly, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin left his position in September 2011 because he opposed the increased military spending, among other reasons.

The annexation of Crimea exacerbated these financial constraints. According to Stratfor.com, the need for consistent and strong military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine is only part of the problem — in addition, “the increased tension with the West and NATO has compelled Moscow to increase training, military exercises, and security posturing such as combat air patrols and naval movements.” Amid international isolation, falling oil prices, and a weakened ruble, inflation rose to double digits in Russia, with prices on some basic foodstuffs increasing as much as 30 percent. And as President Obama noted in August 2014, Russia experienced capital flight of somewhere between $100 and $200 billion. Meanwhile, Russia continues to maintain a large military presence in the rest of its “near abroad,” including stationed troops in Armenia (3,200), Abkhazia and South Ossetia (7,000), Transnistria (1,500), Kyrgyzstan (500), and Tajikistan (5,000), according to a December 2014 Newsweek report. To put this in context, Russia’s entire armed forces comprise between 700,000 and 800,000 personnel, with an army of less than 300,000. Moreover, the military continues to rely primarily on conscripts with limited training.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND RADICAL ISLAM
Russia’s population has been in sharp decline since the early 1990s. As demographer Nicholas Eberstadt wrote in 2011, “The troubles caused by Russia’s population trends…represent a previously unprecedented phenomenon for an urbanized, literate society not at war.” The country continues to face high mortality, low fertility, and emigration of the well-educated in the context of overall economic decline; the Kremlin’s most recent demographical data (from May 2015) shows little change in these trends.

Yet as Russia’s overall population continues to hover at approximately 144 million, its Muslim population has reached around 21-23 million and growing. Muslim families have better health than ethnic Russians (due in part to relatively high alcoholism rates among the latter) and tend to bear more children. According to 2014 statistics from the now-defunct Ministry of Regional Development, the North Caucasus — a Russian region with heavy concentrations of Muslims — has one of the highest growth rates in the country.

This expanding Muslim population is likely to have serious implications for Russia’s security, armed forces, and foreign policy. For example, internal clashes between ethnic Russians and minorities may increase in various parts of the country. Moreover, some analysts believe Muslims may soon make up as many as half of Russia’s military conscripts, raising questions about whether the armed forces would continue to support Moscow’s policies in the North Caucasus. In September 2013, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the army would dramatically cut down on conscripts from that region, despite the military’s overall recruiting shortfall and the large pool of potential soldiers in the North Caucasus. This announcement came several years after the military had reportedly already begun excluding conscripts from that area.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to lose its domestic battle with radical Islam, which has intensified and spread throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia. Most recently, tensions have grown in Tajikistan between pro-Kremlin authorities and the Islamist opposition. On September 4, a rare burst of violence hit the capital, Dushanbe, where nine policemen and thirteen militants were killed. Authorities claimed that “terrorists” who sympathize with the so-called “Islamic State”/ISIS were responsible — in particular, they have blamed former deputy defense minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda, a member of the recently banned Islamic Renaissance Party.

CONCLUSION
As Russia increases its military presence in Syria, it could find itself spread too thin to effectively fulfill its commitments elsewhere. Indeed, on September 5, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko stated that the latest ceasefire agreement in the east had been observed for an entire week — something that had not happened since fighting with Russian-backed separatists first broke out. This statement coincided with reports of Russia’s build-up in Syria. Even so, Moscow shows no signs of decreasing its aggressive posture in its near abroad. In August, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry noted that the Kremlin had deployed troops to Abkhazia “under the pretext of carrying out restoration works over the railway section from Ochamchire to Enguri.” The statement pointed out that Russia had made similar moves prior to its 2008 invasion, when Moscow “illegally launched restoration of the Abkhazian section of the railway and deployment of railway troops to the Georgian territory, which it subsequently used effectively for the transportation of its troops and equipment during the hostilities.” And according to a September 7 Russian Defense Ministry statement, Putin ordered snap military exercises in the Central Military District, a vast area that encompasses the Volga River, the Ural Mountains, and western Siberia. These trends reveal an important irony: as Russia’s military capabilities decline, the Kremlin will likely grow even more aggressive in its near abroad, including the Middle East. Despite their problems, the Russian armed forces still appear capable of carrying out limited missions, so using their broader decline as an excuse to delay tougher action would be a mistake. A more effective approach would be to strongly condemn Moscow’s buildup in Syria while continuing to pressure the Kremlin on its policies toward its neighbors.
**Anna Borshchevskaya is the Ira Weiner Fellow at The Washington Institute.

Why is Russia in Syria now?
Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/September 08/15

News that the Kremlin is beginning to move military assets to Syria is now a foregone conclusion. The reasons why Moscow is sending advisors and equipment to Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad are multi-faceted. In the wake of the recent meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and three top Middle East leaders, and with the upcoming 70th U.N. General Assembly, the timing could not be better. Moscow is already sending a wide array of equipment and personnel by ship to the Syrian port of Tartus. Russia has sent prefabricated housing units for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield, as well as a portable air traffic control station. The housing will enable Moscow to use the airfield as a major hub for ferrying in military supplies to the Syrian government, or possibly as a launch pad for Russian airstrikes. Moscow is also loading ships with equipment bound for Syria.

The plan seems to be to deploy 2,000 – 3,000 Russian personnel, including advisors, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and pilots who will operate aircraft including over a dozen MiG-31s, according to a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) official. That Russian assets are setting up in Assad’s heartland in Latakia is part of Moscow guaranteeing the president and his family’s security.

Moscow has been sending supplies to Syria for the past four years through other means, most notably by airlift. In 2012, Russia’s then-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said Russia had “military and technical advisers” in Syria. Jordanian sources say regular flights to Damascus from Russian deliver “black items.” Moscow also provides plenty of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to the Syrian government via Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU. That the GRU is on the ground and working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is undeniable.The Kremlin sees Syria as part of Russia’s sphere of influence, and is keen on maintaining its place on the world stage and in the Middle East. In addition, the Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely tied to the Kremlin, sees involvement in Syria as necessary to protect Christians from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other extremists.

Transition
Russia’s deployments are part of its plan for transition in Syria. For the past few months, Moscow has been the center of diplomatic activity to settle the conflict. Russia successfully negotiated the removal of chemical weapons from Syria via the 2013 “Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” in order to avoid U.S. and allied airstrikes on the Assad government and its military assets. Arab governments see Moscow as more proactive than the West when it comes to the Syrian question. Putin’s plan in Syria is clear. By deploying Russian assets to Syria, the Kremlin plans to be the force behind upcoming events in Damascus. A few days ago in Vladivostok, Putin said Russia was looking at various options for Syria. He said Damascus should be part of a new international coalition to fight terrorism and extremism, which should take place in tandem with a political process in which Assad should play a role. “The Syrian president… agrees with that, including holding early elections, parliamentary elections, and establishing contact with the so-called healthy opposition, bringing them into governing,” said Putin. That is a pretty strong statement of events that are about to occur in Syria where the Kremlin is dictating to Assad. Russia is preparing for a transition in Syria. The equipment and personnel being deployed are not only to protect Alawites, but also to develop a humanitarian aid campaign. That Russian assets are setting up in Assad’s heartland in Latakia is part of Moscow guaranteeing the president and his family’s security.In addition, the Kremlin sees that it needs to conduct state building to reverse the destructive nature of U.S. wars in the Middle East. The key question is whether the West, and specifically the United States, will go along with Putin’s plan.