Putin’s humiliation in Syria reverberates in Russia

As Russia withdraws forces and equipment from Syria, its missile attack Friday against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure suggests that the Kremlin is determined to show its military might after a humiliating failure in Syria. They turned from terrorists into opposition right in the middle of time zones; in the Far East they were still terrorists, and in Moscow they were already an armed opposition.“ According to a source close to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin demanded an explanation for why Russian intelligence services failed to detect the growing threat to Mr. Assad’s regime until it was too late. While members of Mr. Putin’s top elite haven’t dared to criticize Russia’s strategy in Syria, foreign-policy experts close to the Kremlin are openly discussing the negative repercussions. Writing in the Russian daily Kommersant, Mr. Pukhov criticized Moscow for “protecting the decaying and delegitimized Assad regime" and concluded that the Syrian venture demonstrated “the great limitations for Russia’s ‘great power’ and interventionist policy abroad. Last week, in a piece for RT, a Kremlin-controlled news network, Mr. Lukyanov said that “the symbolic quest to restore Russia’s great-power status—a key motivation for the 2015 Syrian operation—is now obsolete."