Click image for video updating events on the fronts of this theater.
Jeffery Samandar
The simple and unbiased answer is that Russia most probably cannot bring about a reasonable resolution (from the Russian perspective) to the Syrian crisis. This is for multiple reasons. I’ll talk about these lightly so you can do your own research.
Foremost reason being Russia’s own military strategy. Review statements from Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s General Staff of the Armed Forces. He has stated that current and future military issues cannot be resolved by traditional military tactics. Russia now heavily favors Guerrilla warfare tactics to accomplish their objectives. (See war in Ukraine.) This stems from their inability to conduct normal military operations outside of Russian borders due to NATO and other threats.
Next issue is resources. Russia is also going through a nasty economic turmoil. They have like 15% inflation and GDP growth is falling. This is to say that any kind of mass deployment to Syria by Russia is likely to exceed its capacity to finance such an expedition.
Additionally, Russia has had to reorganize its entire military structure around these economic short comings. They now operate on the Brigade level rather than on the Divisional level. That’s good for “frogman” operations going on in Ukraine and counter insurgency operations like Chechnya, but not for large scale street by street offensive sweeps. There’s too much command and logistical overhead.
Also, what units would you pull into the fight? The big issue here is that Russia is heavily involved in the fighting in Ukraine. Russia almost surely seeks to occupy more of Ukraine, well past the current Donbass front. (See failure of Minsk II agreement.) What that means is that Russia is using its crack forces in Ukraine, probably up to 10,000 men in Donbass alone, and that significantly cuts into Russia’s ability to redeploy these men or their resources to another theater of conflict.
Considering how big the opposition in Syria is (probably over 150,000 “rebels/terrorists”) Russia would need to deploy at least 15,000-20,000 men. That would be like the whole of the VDV! (which would never be used in this application). My point is that Russia would have to bring in hordes of conscript soldiers, and they are unmotivated to fight and take disproportional higher casualties (see war in Chechnya). This is more expensive in every possible way, and is massively unpopular back in Russia.
All of this is to say that Russia is incapable of resolving this issue by brute force. I think they have been very smart in how they’ve handled the situation so far. They support their ally up to a reasonable ability and leave the liberation of Syria to Syrians. Syrians must resolve this issue themselves or with the aid of an Arabic Coalition, which isn’t going to happen as the Arab states are largely against the Al-Assad government.
Very regrettably, it seems as if the war will continue on: with Russia propping up the Al-Assad government with limited military assistance and intervention, and with Western/Arab nations supporting the collapse of the Al-Assad government by funding and arming opposition parties.
Jay Wezz
News item courtesy Bob in D.C.
