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Russian Envoy Says Syrian Leader Is Losing Control
Russia Offers a Dark View of Assad’s Chances for Survival
(about 7 hours later)
MOSCOW — Russia’s top Middle East diplomat and the leader of NATO offered dark and strikingly similar assessments of the embattled Syrian president’s future on Thursday, asserting that he was losing control of the country after a nearly two-year conflict that has taken 40,000 lives and has threatened to destabilize the Middle East.
MOSCOW — The outlook for Syria’s embattled president darkened considerably on Thursday when his most powerful foreign ally, Russia, acknowledged that he was losing the struggle against an increasingly coordinated insurgency and for the first time said it was making contingency plans to evacuate its citizens from the country, the Kremlin’s last beachhead in the Middle East.
The bleak appraisals — particularly from Russia, a steadfast strategic Syrian ally — amounted to a new level of pressure on the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who has been resorting to increasingly desperate military measures, including the use of Scud ballistic missiles, to contain an armed insurgency that has encroached on the capital, Damascus.
The Russian assessment, made publicly by a top Foreign Ministry official in Moscow, appeared to signal a major turn in the diplomacy of the nearly two-year-old conflict and presented new evidence that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing politically as well as militarily. On Wednesday it was revealed that Mr. Assad’s forces had resorted to firing Scud ballistic missiles at rebels in an attempt to slow the insurgency’s momentum.
The Russian diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, acknowledged that Mr. Assad’s forces could be defeated by rebels, whom the Syrian leader has repeatedly dismissed as ragtag foreign-backed terrorists with no popular support.
The assessment suggested that Russia no longer viewed Mr. Assad’s involvement in a negotiated solution as a viable alternative. It also appeared to reflect a new recognition in Moscow that Mr. Assad and his minority Alawite government, long a Russian client, could not survive in the face of a well-armed opposition financed by Arab and Western countries seeking his ouster. Some Russian officials have bitterly concluded that Mr. Assad’s foreign adversaries want an outcome decided by military force.
“Unfortunately, it is impossible to exclude a victory of the Syrian opposition,” said Mr. Bogdanov — the clearest indication to date that Russia believed that Mr. Assad could lose.
Further punctuating the Russian assessment was a dark view offered by the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who told reporters in Brussels that “I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse. I think now it is only a question of time.”
Mr. Bogdanov’s remarks, reported by Russia’s Interfax news service, came as the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters in Brussels that Mr. Assad’s use of ballistic missiles, which Western officials monitoring the Syrian conflict reported on Wednesday — and which Syria has denied — reflected his “utter disregard” for Syrian lives. Mr. Rasmussen also predicted the demise of Mr. Assad’s government.
While senior Western officials said the basic Russian position had not shifted markedly, they welcomed the comments that were made to a Kremlin advisory group by Mikhail Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and Russia’s top envoy for the Middle East, which were reported by the Interfax news agency.
“I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” he told reporters after a meeting with the Dutch prime minister at NATO headquarters. “I think now it is only a question of time.”
“Unfortunately, it is impossible to exclude a victory of the Syrian opposition,” Mr. Bogdanov said. “We must look squarely at the facts, and the trend now suggests that the regime and the government in Syria are losing more and more control” and territory.
While NATO member states have made similar predictions before, the assertion by Mr. Rasmussen, the leader of the Western military alliance, reinforced a growing consensus that Mr. Assad’s options for remaining in power had been all but exhausted — a view now apparently shared by Russia.
Mr. Bogdanov predicted a bloody future with many more dead, suggesting that the fall of Mr. Assad and his government would not mean the end of the civil war, which is increasingly sectarian — Sunnis from within and without versus minority Alawites and Christians. “If you accept this price to topple the president, what can we do?” he asked. “We of course consider this totally unacceptable.”
The State Department welcomed Mr. Bogdanov’s comments that Mr. Assad was losing ground but indicated there was still a wide gulf between the United States and Russia about how to deal with the crisis in Syria.
He said Russia continued to urge political compromise to avoid many more deaths, but he also said Russia was making plans to evacuate its many citizens in Syria, if necessary.
Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said that the United States would like to “commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime’s days are numbered.”
Senior Western officials said the remarks of Mr. Bogdanov and Mr. Rasmussen were not tied to any major or sudden shift on the ground. Rather, these officials said, the long war of attrition had leached power and money from the Assad government, and although the Syrian military had not been broken, it was no longer capable of regaining and retaining large portions of territory.
But she said that Russia should take steps to facilitate Mr. Assad’s departure from power by withdrawing “residual support for the Assad regime.” While Russia has said it would not sign new military contracts with the Syrian government, it has not promised to sever existing military contracts. Nor has Russia cut off all economic support to the Syrian government, Ms. Nuland said.
A mixture of opposition fighters, with arms and training from Qatar and other Persian Gulf countries, are performing better in the field, and while some are fighting for a more democratic Syria, others are fighting for sectarian reasons, as committed Sunni Muslims try to topple a minority Alawite government.
Throughout the Syria crisis, as it has grown from peaceful protests in March 2011 to engulf the country in armed conflict, Russia has acted as Syria’s principal international shield, protecting Mr. Assad diplomatically from Western and Arab attempts to oust him and holding out the possibility of his staying in power during a transition.
The Syrian military’s use of Scud missiles, reported by American and NATO officials, reflected what they called an effort by Mr. Assad to prevent the opposition from exploiting the military airfields, fighter planes and equipment that have fallen into insurgent hands, and which the Syrian military apparently believes it cannot recapture.
Only in recent days has Russia’s view seemed to shift, while Mr. Assad’s foes, grouped in a newly minted and still uncertain coalition, have garnered ever broader international support as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.
The Scuds have been fired since Monday from the An Nasiriyah Air Base, north of Damascus, according to American officials familiar with the classified intelligence reports about the attacks. The target was the Sheikh Suleiman base, which rebel forces had occupied. Syria has denied it fired any missiles.
“We must look squarely at the facts, and the trend now suggests that the regime and the government in Syria are losing more and more control and more and more territory,” Mr. Bogdanov said in remarks to Russia’s Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group, according to Interfax.
“There is no particular tipping point now, but it could come at any time,” a senior Western official said Thursday. “What is clearly true is that the opposition is not only taking but holding territory, especially up north. And it is more and more difficult for the regime to take that territory back. So one reason for the Scuds has been to go after military facilities, like aircraft and airports, to make it hard for the opposition to use them.”
Russia, he said, was preparing to evacuate its citizens — a complex task, since for decades, Russian women have married Syrian men sent to study in Russia and returned to Syria with them to raise families.
Reacting to Mr. Bogdanov’s appraisal, Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said the United States would like to “commend the Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that the regime’s days are numbered.”
It was the first time an official at Mr. Bogdanov’s level had announced plans for an evacuation, which sent a message to the Syrian government that Russia no longer held out hope that the government could prevail. He said Russia had a plan to withdraw its personnel from its embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus, but that was s not yet necessary. Russia’s press attaché in Damascus confirmed this, telling Interfax that there was “no sharp deterioration” in conditions there.
Frederic C. Hof, who had served as a special adviser on Syria to the State Department, said, “The regime and their Russian supporters alike have been living in a bubble of illusion,” which had now burst.
Mr. Bogdanov offered a dark view of how the conflict would unfold from this point, saying that it took two years for the rebels to control 60 percent of Syria’s territory, and another year and a half will pass before they control the rest.
But the endgame in Syria is not clear, and American policy is considered hesitant and fuzzy by its allies. While American and French officials insist that they are not engaged in arming the opposition, Sunni leaderships in Qatar and the Persian Gulf are doing so, as they did in Libya, seeming to be more interested in toppling a non-Sunni leadership than in shaping what follows.
“If up until now 40,000 people have died, then from this point forward it will be crueler, and you will lose dozens or many hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “If you accept this price to topple the president, what can we do? We of course consider this totally unacceptable.”
Senior officials in Washington have said that the fall of Mr. Assad would not necessarily mean the end of the civil and sectarian war. Some officials see the possibility of a divided Syria, with an Alawite and Christian enclave near Lebanon, defended by the remnants of Mr. Assad’s government, while others think such an enclave could be a recipe for further destabilization. Israeli officials are worried that their long-stable border with Syria could become a new area of conflict if radical Islamists dominate a post-Assad Syria or seize control of chemical weapons.
As the Russian official spoke, fresh evidence of the intensity of the battle emerged. During the civil war, Moscow has been the principal arms supplier for the Damascus government, as it has been for decades. Obama administration and NATO officials said on Wednesday that Syrian government forces had resorted to firing Scud missiles at rebel fighters as the government struggled to slow the momentum of the insurgency.
While the Obama administration pushed for the creation of the new National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and finally recognized it this week as the “legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” the coalition does not yet constitute an alternative government. And President Obama himself acknowledged that some of the most effective fighters against Mr. Assad are radical Sunnis who “have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda.”
The officials said that over the last week, Mr. Assad’s forces for the first time had fired at least six Soviet-designed Scuds in the latest bid to push back rebels who have consistently chipped away at the government’s military superiority. Syria’s Foreign Ministry denied the assertion on Thursday, saying in a statement that missiles “were not used in confronting the terrorist groups.”
From the first, Russia has taken the view that Mr. Assad was opposed by “armed gangs” and outsiders, echoing Mr. Assad’s own appraisal of the uprising. Moscow has tried to maintain its supplies of weapons and spare parts to Syrian forces, ensuring that no arms embargo resolution could be passed in the United Nations Security Council.
Syrian state media and antigovernment activists reported that at least 16 people had been killed when a car bomb exploded near a school in the town of Qatana, southwest of the capital, on Thursday.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has denounced what he considers to be naïve Western meddling, as in Libya, with the replacement of stable governments by chaos and bloodshed, not democracy. Russia has consistently said Mr. Assad’s departure would produce a long process of fragmentation in Syria, but that is already happening. And Moscow has strongly criticized meetings like those of the Friends of Syria this week in Marrakesh, Morocco, which also supported the opposition council. Russia argues that such support diminishes the possibility of a negotiated solution.
The bomb wounded more than 20 people, leaving some in critical condition, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain and tracks the conflict through a network of activists. Government forces still hold sway in Qatana, a town with a Sunni Muslim majority and Christian minority, Agence France-Presse reported.
Aleksei K. Pushkov, the head of Russia’s parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, said via Twitter that Marrakesh “drives a stake through any attempt for a political solution. Now it is clear — only war.” He also said, “Syrian rebels are threatening to attack the embassies of Russia and Ukraine in Damascus, in order to deal with Russians.”
The number of car bombs in residential areas appears to have increased in recent weeks, hitting neighborhoods perceived as housing many government supporters as well as others considered sympathetic to the uprising.
Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, said, “The main view here is that there is preparation for something — if not intervention, something bold.” He said Russian policy makers saw parallels with Libya, where recognition of the Transitional National Council “meant a pretext for war.”
Agence France-Presse also reported that Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim al-Shaar was wounded in a bomb attack on his ministry on Wednesday. But he was not seriously hurt, the agency said, quoting an unidentified security source who said the bombing was believed to have been carried out by a saboteur because only official vehicles can approach the building.
Ellen
Barry reported from Moscow, and Steven Erlanger from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon; Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt from Washington; Alan Cowell from London; and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Mr. Shaar was injured in an earlier bombing on July 18 that killed four senior security officials at a Damascus headquarters.
Russia is eager to protect its strategic interests in Syria, including a naval facility at the port of Tartus, and has been meeting frequently with opposition delegations, presumably laying the groundwork for a possible transition. In his remarks to the Public Chamber, Mr. Bogdanov said he believed that half the Russian citizens living in Syria supported the rebels.
“Moreover, some of the people coming here as part of opposition coalitions have Russian passports,” he said, according to Interfax.
Russia has cast its stance on Syria as a principled stand against Western-led intervention — a passionate topic for President Vladimir V. Putin, who believes that Russia was deceived into supporting a no-fly zone in Libya that ultimately led to a military campaign that overthrew Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. In recent days, Moscow has been adamant that its fundamental position has not changed.
For many months, the Russian authorities have resisted Western pressure to persuade Mr. Assad to step down. Though Russia has said it supports the creation of a transitional government, it has been at odds with the West on whether Mr. Assad — and his ally Iran — would have a voice in it.
Mr. Bogdanov said on Thursday that Russia’s stance has been deliberately distorted in the Western media, an effort “intended to weaken our influence” in the Middle East, and that third-party governments have strengthened rebel forces by providing weapons.
“Massive supply of modern armaments have pushed the Syrian rebels to stake their hopes on force,” leading to “an acceleration of the spiral of violence,” he said.
Leonid Medvedko, a political analyst who covered Syria for Soviet news services, said officials had so far been reluctant to declare an evacuation of Russian citizens “because there are technical questions, political questions — because it will mean we are fully giving up Syria.”
“It is a humanitarian step, but each humanitarian step has a political meaning,” he said.
From the first, Russia has taken the view that Mr. Assad’s departure would usher in a long and chaotic process of fragmentation in Syria, but most experts this week said they were braced for the beginning of that process. Mr. Medvedko, the former journalist, said he expected Syria to split into four parts that would be home to distinct ethnic and religious groups, much as Yugoslavia did in the 1990s.
Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs and head of an influential policy group, said that even if Mr. Assad left the country, his countrymen would keep fighting.
“The prevailing view is that it will be complete and desperate chaos,” said Mr. Lukyanov. “To remove Assad will not mean settlement of the Syrian conflict.”
Referring to the minority sect that rules Syria, he continued: “You can remove him — I don’t know in which way — but what will you do to 300,000 Alawites? They will be fighting for their lives, not for power anymore .”
Ellen Barry reported from Moscow, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from London, Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.
