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Russian Envoy Says Syrian Leader Is Losing Control Russia Offers a Dark View of Assad’s Chances for Survival
(about 2 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.