“There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen.”
The foregoing sentiment, ostensibly of biblical origin, fits well with recent events in Syria and the toppling of its tyrannical and generational Assad regime. The collapse occurred over what seemed only a matter of days for a regime dating back to 1971 when Hafez al-Assad gained the presidency of Syria in a coup, passing it on to his son Bashar in 2000. The latter continued Syria’s decades-long ties with Iran and its regional militant proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and went on to institute a reign of terror of outright killings and incarcerations, bringing on the condemnation of the West. It would all come to an end in a catastrophic dismantling of the regime and the abandonment of its leader. Thus far, it highlights Vladimir Putin’s questionable place in global opinion.
The Conclusion of Syria’s Civil War
Civil war had broken out in 2011 threatening Assad’s regime and ultimately prompting Russian intervention in 2015. Of itself, the incursion was seen as largely a low-cost opportunistic exploit into the Middle East complementing Russia’s support for another authoritarian dictatorship. In doing so, Russia could now project power countering the territorial southern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the development of a warm-water naval base in Tartus along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean basin and an air base in Khmeimim. Russia has used these bases further to project influence into Africa by extending support for its paramilitary forces that have undertaken malign activities in several nations within its northern and sub-Saharan regions.
Russia brought its own well-known brand of brutality to the Syrian war with a protracted indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian infrastructure including medical facilities in Aleppo using cluster and incendiary munitions during September-October 2016, killing 440 civilians, among them more than 90 children.
During its first three years of involvement, Russian air strikes would kill more than 18,000 people. Such atrocity coupled with the Syrian regime’s use of sarin gas upon the town of Khan Shaykhun in April 2017 further added to the massive Syrian refugee crisis that threatened Europe with more than a million asylum-seekers. To obfuscate Assad’s role in the chemical attack, Russia launched a disinformation campaign days afterward denying Syrian involvement, placing the blame upon the United States (U.S.) and Ukraine. The latter accusation was disproven after joint independent investigations by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, placing the blame squarely where it belonged.
As if to remind the Syrians of Russia’s bloody footprint upon their nation, the closing days of the Assad regime were marked by further Russian aerial bombardment of civilian infrastructure and medical facilities. Now, after evacuating both its Tartus naval base and Khmeimim air base, leaving behind an undetermined number of assets scattered within the country, Russia is in the unenviable position of having to negotiate with Syrian opposition forces regarding what is to happen with its once prized possessions.
With all the preceding said, this essay comes to serve as an endnote to the previous release entitled, “The Naysayer Pundits and the Future of Ukraine” in which objection was raised to the mounting opinion regarding the apparent negative state-of-affairs for Ukraine in its war with Russia. The adage, “things can turn on a dime,” adds to this content by what it may portend not just for Russia’s meddling in the Middle East but how it is managing overall on the domestic front and globally.
Putin’s War
Let’s turn to this war in Ukraine for a start. During these latter months, incremental gains made by Russian forces in the Kursk region of Russia and in eastern Ukraine have been overshadowed by reports of its massive troop losses reaching a new monthly high of 45,680 casualties in November, surpassing an October figure of 41,980. These reports conclude the fifth straight month of rising losses with the daily average now amounting to 1,523. It reflects Russia’s desperate efforts to gain ground as winter sets in when it will face new challenges with recruitment. Estimates of Russian casualties, dead and wounded, by August 2023, 1.5 years into the war, were nearing 300,000 with current conservative estimates, now approaching three years, exceeding 600,000. The death toll by country appears comparatively higher for Russia with a ratio of over 4:1.
Going unnoticed, otherwise, has been Ukraine’s gradual isolation of Russian-occupied and illegally annexed Crimea which may better herald the outcome of this war than what is witnessed in the eastern region. Ukraine has eliminated a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet over the course of the previous 2.5 years using marine drones and missiles as substitutes for the absence of an actual navy, forcing Russian ships to retreat from Crimea to remote ports on actual Russian territory. Using the same tactics, it has gone on to weaken Russia’s supply chain to the peninsula by targeting ferries as well as both road and rail transport on the Kerch bridge that carry supplies directly from the Russian mainland.
The campaign has disrupted military logistics and much-needed fuel supplies and highlights the considerable further vulnerabilities that exist with recently added long-range weapons capabilities acquired by Ukraine. This applies also to new Russian efforts to construct land-based railways to Crimea in Russian-occupied eastern and southern Ukraine where air defense systems are stretched thin and bridges, in particular, can be targeted by aerial attack or sabotage. Ukrainian direct attacks within Crimea have targeted Russian supply and command networks, air defense installations, military airfields and radar surveillance stations. Elimination of such resources may indeed be the prequel to a final definitive destruction of Putin’s famed Kerch bridge where, thus far, comparatively minor assaults have succeeded in disrupting traffic.
Russia’s Financial Times
Turning now to Russia itself, recent attention has been drawn to its domestic plight with the state of its economy increasingly in question as its ruble continues to lose value, dropping by more than 19% against the U.S. dollar (USD) over 2024. Forecasts of the ruble/USD exchange are reaching 119.8 per U.S. dollar in 2025, a significant devaluation from its 89.2 valuation at the start of 2024. The volatility of the ruble will discourage investment and likely prompt Russians to move their capital out of the country obliging the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to use its own increasingly limited reserves to shore up the ruble.
Inflationary pressures have already forced Russia’s interest rate to rise to a level that threatens investment and industrial growth. The rate of inflation had reached 8.5% by October causing loan repayments by businesses to be mostly compensating for interest on the loans. By early December, the interest rate had climbed to at least 22% for businesses and 25% for individuals while annual inflation rose to 8.7% with predictions of exceeding 9% by yearend, well beyond an earlier forecasted target estimate of 4%. The reliability of economic reporting by Russia, however, has also been questioned by some authorities with accusations of widespread manipulation toward more optimistic figures. For consumers, overall prices have climbed 7.4% over 2024 with the price of potatoes rising 74% during the year. The retail price of butter during the same time rose 30% along with other staples such as vegetables and sunflower oil.
A slowing economy with rising consumer prices, diminishing productivity coinciding with a labor shortage has raised concerns regarding stagflation on the horizon, a fate that could easily herald collapse. This has put Russia in the ridiculous situation that it cannot afford either to win or lose its war as winning would saddle Russia with the need to provide security and reparations in the occupied territory. The ongoing cost of military salaries, compensation for families that have had members killed or disabled coupled with the need to replace massive munitions losses on the front have contributed to the Gross National Product (GDP) of which more than 10% is now geared to sustaining the war effort and 40% of the government budget similarly committed.
Contrary to the bravado of Vladimir Putin’s regime boasting that Russia’s economy could withstand international sanctions, the country has found itself strained under the weight of their continuing restrictions upon its trade. The realization has set in that initial sanctions were not intended for the short term but rather given rein to worsen over a much longer period while further sanctions were never far away. Russia’s unrealistic reliance on fossil fuel export for a significant portion of its revenue recalls the late Senator John McCain’s opinion that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.” Revenue from oil and gas accounts for almost 76% of all industry revenue in Russia. This fell nearly 17% in November alone while taxes raised from the sale of oil during the same month were down 21% from the previous year. Earnings from the export of all fossil fuels have fallen by more than 50% or about $600 million from mid-2022.
The situation for Russia could become more precarious in light of intentions by Saudi Arabia to drop the price of crude oil below $60 a barrel should the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, including Russia (OPEC+), not reduce oil production as otherwise, the Saudis would flood the market. Russia, in fact, has been an overproducer in OPEC+ because of the need to finance its war. Such a move by Saudi Arabia would ostensibly cause Russia to be spending more in extracting and shipping the oil than it could make from its sale. International sanctions introduced in late 2022 imposed a $60 price cap on Russia’s crude to limit the profits that could be achieved by its sale. Russia has been able to circumvent the cap by using a shadow fleet of unregistered tankers that hides the source of the shipment. The process has allowed Russia to continue profiting from its export as a result but the ability to do so has its limitations set by the cost of extraction and shipping against the allowable price per barrel. Recent additional sanctions applied to tankers transporting Russian oil and foreign banks involved with Russian lenders will serve to further impede Russia’s ability to sell its oil.
Continuing the decline in export revenue will be the pending closure in 2025 of a pipeline transporting Russia’s natural gas to Europe that passes through Ukraine. It will force Russia to seek other buyers in a shrinking sanction-ridden market. Additionally, new U.S. sanctions introduced in November have targeted Gazprombank from doing business with the U.S. and its allies. The bank is Russia’s third largest by assets and provides banking services to the energy industry primarily. It has been one of the few major remaining lenders in Russia despite the hardships imposed by mounting interest rates. An additional 50 smaller Russian banks were also similarly excluded.
Russia’s Neighborhood
Russia has been confronted with rejection on a variety of scales not only by the majority of nations of the European Union (EU) but by its more immediate neighboring nations in eastern Europe. Of these latter, certain leaders such as Viktor Orban of Hungary, Robert Fico of Slovakia and Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia have thrown in with Putin’s Russia and have served to promote rhetoric justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For his mouthing of Russian propaganda, Orban in particular, has been recognized as one of “Russia’s useful Idiots.” Apart from framing Hungary as an “extension of Russian foreign policy,” Orban has committed his nation to be almost entirely dependent upon Russian energy thus creating leverage for Russia in future dealings with Hungary. His pro-Russian stance has drawn severe criticism not only from the EU but from within Hungary. Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister, a survivor of a recent assassination, has skewed his nation’s polarized sentiments toward Russia. He is a close ally of Orban and opposed to liberal democratic values and, consequently, his party, Smer-SD, has fallen behind in opinion polls that have sided with the pro-European, liberal opposition party, Progressive Slovakia.
As with Orban’s Hungary, Fico’s Slovakia is almost 100% dependent upon Russian energy although this particular vulnerability has become more critical with Ukraine’s refusal to continue its gas transit agreement with Russia scheduled to end on January 1, 2025. To worsen matters, Slovakia is currently floundering with serious economic instability, decline in health care and social welfare and an increasing distrust of its leadership. Serbia, another potential hostage of Russian energy policy, is entirely dependent upon Russia for its natural gas supply. President Vucic has accordingly vowed never to impose sanctions on Russia while thanking Putin for “providing sufficient quantities of gas for Serbia at favorable prices.” To its credit, otherwise, Serbia has provided funding to Ukraine in aid for its vulnerable children and those people displaced by the war.
Desperate for further alliances with nearby nations, Russia has focused its attention on electoral meddling in a number of states using well-practiced tactics of corrupting national populist parties, and conforming their platforms with its own foreign policy interests. Other undertakings have included the outright purchase of votes and dissemination of false information maligning the EU and NATO. Fear likewise has been another avenue proven to attract votes using familiar nonsensical tropes like the threat of migrants stealing jobs and promoting social unrest, fascist Ukrainian elements appearing at one’s borders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) plotting to overthrow the government. Russia continues to experience difficulty recreating some semblance of its former eastern European bloc as most nations appear to still favor the West as noted in both recent EU parliamentary and national elections.
Although there were concerns of increased disillusionment toward democratic governance and a potential for a takeover in the EU parliamentary elections by pro-Russian far-right representation in 2024, this failed in large part to materialize. The case was particularly in evidence for Slovakia’s Fico and his party and while Orban’s party did win with 44.8% of the vote in Hungary, it did experience its worst result in nearly two decades. Moreover, national elections during 2024 in three eastern European nations – Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia – brought to light similar results. In all three, Russian interference in the electoral process was evident. Russian disinformation and financing poured into Moldova but was overwhelmed by the Moldovan’s desire for democratic rule along with the addition of EU membership to their constitution. Bulgaria, a NATO country, also favored pro-European association over that of its traditional past sympathies for Russia. Instability, fueled by Russian interference, does remain within the country, however.
For Georgia, rather different circumstances resulted in the “re-election” of a populist pro-Russian party, Georgian Dream, which has been in power since 2012. The party is effectively controlled by its founder, pro-Russian oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili who once served as prime minister. Russian influence over the governance of Georgia has come under considerable scrutiny. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) identified reports of public sector employee voter coercion while a number of videos surfaced showing evidence of ballot stuffing. Further doubts were raised when a group of 2,000 election observers declared that preliminary results did not reflect the will of Georgian citizens. The matter was made more obvious by ongoing public protest in the form of mass demonstrations that followed the fraud-ridden election and the inevitable decision by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze to suspend negotiations to join the EU. Georgia’s President Salome Zurabishvili, the ceremonial head of state and presumptively, Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Forces herself has sought to annul the election results and the legitimacy of the current regime.
Romania’s national electoral process was recently underway when it was interrupted by annulment of its first-round results for the presidency by the nation’s Constitutional Court. Evidence of a Russian interference campaign was revealed after declassification of intelligence reports by current President Klaus Iohannis. Clandestine manipulation of social media platforms TikTok and Telegram gave the impression to voters that dark-horse, pro-Russian opposition candidate, Calin Georgescu, an ultranationalist, seemed to have risen to the level of being a plausible contender. The Romanian public reacted to the revelation with mass protests against Russia’s interference. No doubt, Russia will attempt to avert attention by suggesting overreach by the West and will continue supporting extremist politics in Europe in its attempt to destabilize the NATO alliance and weaken support for Ukraine.
Putin’s Global Ambitions
Recent news of the collapse of the Assad regime has embarrassed Putin’s Russia even beyond its humbling but ongoing disastrous experience in Ukraine and will undoubtedly have a further effect on sentiments regarding its status as a reliable ally going forward. Such a sentiment may not only play its part in Europe but more remotely in nations like Venezuela where Nicholas Maduro faces the same claim of illegitimacy for election fraud as does that of Kobakhidze’s regime in Georgia. Another one of Russia’s “useful idiots,” Maduro has played into the hands of Putin over the past two decades with the latter providing cover thwarting U.S. sanctions and providing financial support by investing in Venezuela’s oil sector in exchange for acquisition of the country’s abundant resources. His protracted struggle for presidential legitimacy dating back to 2013 has required ongoing support from Putin as it has with the current election in which he appears to have lost the majority vote with 66% going to the opposition’s Edmundo Gonzalez compared to Maduro’s 31%.
The current stand-off with the opposition over Maduro’s attempt at seizing power through voter fraud and intimidation is likely to come to a head soon. A question remains whether Putin may choose to intercede directly by paramilitary support or engage his Cuban and Nicaraguan proxies to save Maduro yet again. Otherwise, should the democratic opposition succeed in ousting this illegitimate regime, Putin’s status as a meaningful ally of failed authoritarian regimes would be further tarnished beyond that of the Syrian debacle.
Perhaps the most ambitious of Putin’s global aspirations has been the evolution of BRICS, an informal international political organization originally constituted by Brazil, Russia, India and China, which held its first summit in 2009, and was joined by South Africa in 2010, hence the acronym. Its intent was to serve as a counterweight to the predominantly Western-led amalgams of global institutions (i.e., G7, World Bank) by aligning their economic and diplomatic policies and, perhaps more specifically, to reduce overall dependence on the U.S. dollar through the creation of new financial institutions. Four new members, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), joined in 2024 with Saudi Arabia accepting membership without actually joining until further clarification was given. With several other nations interested in joining, the organization stands to evolve into another multipolar entity which will undoubtedly have its own internal divisions and grievances over matters of individual national concerns as with Russia’s belligerence and fiscal mismanagement.
The 2024 BRICS summit was hosted by Russia as was the first in 2009. Increasingly estranged from the West by its invasion of Ukraine and other malign activities worldwide, Russia has been progressively crippled by international sanctions imposed by the West. Burdened by serious fiscal circumstances, it has sought some means of sidestepping the U.S. dollar-led international payment system and looked to BRICS for a solution beyond that of simply buying Russian energy. However, Putin found that its members, many of whom have retained good relations with the U.S., were disinclined to condemn the West or engage in a wholesale effort to create an alternative international order. Although critical of what were termed, “illegal sanctions,” there was hesitancy in ascribing justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, likely also coupled with discomfort over the several Russian war crimes committed in the process of its war. A consensus was agreed upon that the war be ended through mediation, a proposition which does not align with the sort of sentiments expressed by Putin.
A peculiar development between two BRICS colleagues, Russia and China, came about earlier in the year when a planned gas pipeline from Russia to China transiting Mongolia was abandoned in part over possible Chinese concerns that Russia would assume unilateral control over the Mongolian section of the pipeline. Russia’s beleaguered gas giant, Gazprom, having lost $6.9 billion in 2023 due to falling gas demands in Europe, stood to recover somewhat with this new development. Subsequent reporting indicated that China demanded that the pricing be adjusted to Russia’s heavily subsidized domestic levels and that it would only commit to purchasing a small fraction of the pipeline’s annual capacity. It was an indication of how Putin’s actions in Ukraine has left him dependent almost entirely on China’s economic support. Another uncomfortable situation with China arose with the surprising imposition of a 55.65% tariff by Russia on Chinese made furniture parts. This move not only stood to raise consumer prices for Russians but would also raise the cost of producing furniture in Russia, counter to the intended protectionism of the industry. The issue has reminded the Chinese of past territorial grievances with Russia and the need to remain vigilant about trade relations despite the apparent understanding it shared regarding energy cooperation.
Another close BRICS associate in Putin’s world of authoritarian regimes has been Iran, a nation seen to be openly participating in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by delivering drones and missiles that have been used extensively to target civilian infrastructure. Over the last several months, Iran’s stature in the Middle East has been significantly diminished as a result of its more direct confrontation with Israel. Its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have been decimated by direct military engagement in Lebanon and Gaza, respectively, as well as targeted assassinations of their leadership structure. Worsening the situation for Iran, the largest military attack upon its soil since the Iran-Iraq war (1980 – 1988) took place in late October. The Israeli attack targeted its most advanced air defense batteries and degraded its missile and drone production facilities along with destruction of a nuclear weapons research and development structure, all apparently confirmed by satellite imagery. Confronted with the inability to now deploy regional proxies in its effort to retaliate, Iran is left to consider undertaking more direct retaliatory strikes and, in turn, absent its Russian-made air defense system, to face further Israeli retribution with inevitable serious consequences.
By midyear of 2024, global views of Russia and Vladimir Putin remained “broadly negative” after the historic lows achieved in 2022 shortly following its invasion of Ukraine, according to a Pew Research report that surveyed 35 countries. Majorities in more than half the countries registered an unfavorable verdict. Support has been higher in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, although events in recent months may have dulled enthusiasm for Putin’s leadership and decision-making skills. The recent demise of the Assad regime brought to light the limits of Russian global power with what now appears to be the loss of a strategic military presence in the eastern Mediterranean after spending billions of dollars defending a tyrant without eliminating his enemies. Not only did Putin abandon his ally with a woefully insufficient response to the immediate rebel insurgency but appeared to disregard the threat upon his own military establishment within Syria. With Iran also preoccupied in its increasingly tenuous situation in the Middle East and likely to be further unsettled by the return of a second Trump presidency, the promise of military support for Russia will not be at the top of its priorities, if at all.
In the broader scope of global public opinion, it appears that Putin has managed to reduce Russia’s status in the eyes of not simply those who openly protest its meddling in the national affairs of countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America but those who reside elsewhere and witness what he has done to his own nation – now a rogue entity and a criminal enterprise without a soul.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2024. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
