Syria: Assad's last stand

Over 20 months into this conflict, there are signs that Russia is having second thoughts

Editorial

The Guardian, Tuesday 4 December 2012

"A huge battle, perhaps the decisive one of the Syrian civil war, is about to erupt in Damascus. The UN announced it was withdrawing non-essential staff, and the rebels, flush with arms captured from strategic military bases, money, and surface to air missiles, are moving in. They are not strong enough to take the capital, but nor are they in any mood to withdraw. After a war this long and this bitter, there is only one direction of travel, and that is forwards.

Bashar al-Assad has ringed the city with a force 80,000-strong and is reported by his Russian interlocutors to have lost all hope of either victory or escape.....

Reality is making an unwelcome intrusion into their calculations. Russia's position is weaker now that the rebels are stronger militarily, and that European support for the Free Syrian Army means money and arms are now flooding in. Vladimir Putin's remarks on Monday in Ankara that Russia was not enrolled as defender of the current government in Syria are the closest the Russian president has come to distancing himself from his former ally. Russian diplomats will now have to open channels to the very opposition forces inside and outside Syria that they have shunned....."