RUSSIAN warplanes are in the skies over Syria. For the past several weeks, the Kremlin has been beefing up its presence, sending aircraft and sophisticated air-defence systems. Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Monday, Vladimir Putin called for a "broad international coalition" against Islamic State (IS). On the morning of September 30th, the Russian parliament granted Mr Putin permission to deploy forces abroad. Russian officials say the thousands of Russian citizens (mostly from the North Caucasus) reportedly fighting for IS present them with a grave national-security threat. But with their first air strikes in Syria—their first intervention in the Middle East in decades—Russian forces bombarded rebel-held areas where IS has little to no presence. For Mr Putin clearly, an important goal is the propping up of his long-time ally, Bashar Assad, who controls some 20% of his country after four years of bloody war. Why is the Kremlin so intent on supporting Mr Assad?
Tight ties between Russia and Syria stretch back more than four decades. During the cold war, a newly independent Syria aligned with the Eastern block. As a young man, Hafez Assad, Bashar's father, learned to fly fighter jets in the Soviet Union. Soon after taking power in a coup in 1970, the elder Mr Assad paid a visit to Moscow, seeking weapons and support. A lucrative arms pipeline started flowing; when Bashar came to power, he expanded the contracts, turning Russia into Syria's biggest supplier. The Syrian government also allowed the Soviet Union to build a resupply station at the port of Tartus, which is now Russia's sole remaining naval base in the Middle East and on the Mediterranean sea. Syria is also an important Russian military-intelligence base and listening post. Cultural connections elevated the relationship beyond the obvious strategic and commercial interests. Scores of Syrians came to study in the Soviet Union; many married and raised mixed families.
Yet Russia's support for Mr Assad has less to do with Syria per se, than with the West. The Kremlin watched the Arab Spring in horror, seeing uprisings against authoritarian leaders as American conspiracies. While Mr Putin harbors no particular personal affection for Mr Assad, the Syrian leader has become a symbol of resisting "colour revolutions" and attempts at "regime change". Having backed Mr Assad thus far, allowing him to fall now would mean that Mr Putin is "retreating under American pressure, which is the one thing he cannot do," argues Georgy Mirsky of Moscow's Higher School of Economics. The latest gambit in Syria has also helped Mr Putin deflect attention from the unwon war in Ukraine and bring Russia back into the company of world powers—Mr Obama met Mr Putin at the UN General Assembly for the first time in two years. Mr Putin's message, both to the domestic audience and to the non-Western world, is that Russia remains indispensable to solving global problems, whether the West likes it or not.
In keeping with his style, Mr Putin has opted to play hardball in Syria. Rather than contributing to the war's resolution, Russia's presence will likely deepen the conflict. While America has softened its stance on the need for Mr Assad's immediate exit, his presence presents an intractable obstacle to any cooperation between Russia's ad-hoc coalition (which so far includes Iran, Iraq and Syria) and America's. Yet with air defence assets already on the ground, the Kremlin can impose a no-fly zone for NATO forces; on Wednesday it declared a de facto one, though coalition countries said they were continuing to fly missions, raising the prospect of potentially disastrous accidents. So far, Russian officials emphasize that ground operations are not up for discussion. Support among the Russian population for intervention in Syria remains low, and the spectre of the Soviet Union's decade long war in Afghanistan still looms. Yet so too does the risk of mission creep. The more chips Mr Putin places on Syria, the harder it will be for him to fold.
