The United States pretends to believe that Russia is a credible partner in resolving the Syrian crisis. Russia cannot believe its luck and carries on as before, but with a greater sense of impunity.
According to The New Times (an independent Russian journal), when Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Moscow earlier this month and was first forced to wait two hours to meet with a bored and fidgety Vladimir Putin, he really had only one pressing matter to discuss: the imminent transfer of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Bashar al-Assad. Damascus had already deposited $100 million of $900 million to Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned financial institution now known for issuing refunds, in partial satisfaction of a 2010 contract for the sophisticated air defense system. The New Times quoted an unnamed London source as saying: "The main discussion [between Kerry and Putin] naturally took place in the closed portion of the talks. The Russians let the Americans know that the contracts for the S-300s and other weapons would be fulfilled."
If true, this would mean that Kerry's now notorious joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at which the dead-on-arrival plan to resuscitate a year-old peace initiative was mooted, occurred with the Americans' full knowledge that the Kremlin's position on Syria had, if anything, only hardened over time. Kerry, meanwhile, was the one to hint that the U.S. was ready to scupper its precondition for renewed negotiations with the Syrian regime; namely that Assad must renounce power. However much this self-abasing performance was later downplayed or "clarified" by the State Department, the signal to the Russians was clear: we'll do practically anything to bring you on board.
And so the Kremlin wasted no time in thanking the U.S. for its solicitousness. In addition to reiterating the viability of the S-300s sale, and apparently speeding up its fulfillment, Moscow began deliveries to Syria of improved versions of the Yakhont anti-ship missiles, "outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more effective," in the phrasing of The New York Times. About a dozen Russian warships have also been deployed to the Mediterranean in a demonstration of "muscle flexing," as one U.S. official put it to the Wall Street Journal.
Russia's military retrenchment has coincided with further anti-American humiliations. Last week, the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB), captured Ryan Fogle, an American embassy official in Moscow, who was alleged to be a CIA agent. Although his mugshot made him look like a stable boy just pulled off a farmer's daughter, Fogle was said to be on the prowl for FSB recruits, a task for which he evidently required a compass, a dated map of Moscow, and a cellular phone that would have been cutting edge technology in 1998. As Fogle was being "PNGed," it emerged that a previous CIA operative, Benjamin Dillon, had been expelled from Russia in January. Now comes a fresh report that a former U.S. embassy official and prominent anti-corruption attorney, Thomas Firestone, was detained for 16 hours at Sheremetyevo airport almost as Kerry's plane was arriving on the tarmac. Russian intelligence had unsuccessfully tried in March to recruit Firestone, formerly honored by their government for his help with financial crimes. So he too now had to leave the country.
"Russians have always been loyal to their old friends, and Assad is one of those guys who has been known to the Russian authorities for so many years," Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general told me. "This loyalty and support is quite understandable. It is based not so much on geostrategic interests but on an allegiance to a man who never betrayed or let the Russians down." Hafez al-Assad, whom Kalugin met, "was a man one could do business with" and the same thinking evidently applies among fellow Chekists (both past and present) to Hafez's second son, Bashar.
