Putin Has Betrayed and Abandoned Syria

But then so has everyone else as well.

Where have I been these past few days? Shouldn’t I have been taking a victory lap and screaming, “I was right!” and “I told you so!” this whole time?

Well, yes … yes, I should have.

But I was busy doing some cramming and studying on the topic. See, I had followed Syria closely a decade ago, but dropped the whole thing out of disgust when the fighting was concluded with nothing being resolved. Everything devolved into yet another cover-up and a conspiracy caper, which I admit that I wasn’t equipped to understand at the time. Like many, I believed the lives that the Kremlin and Tehran propagandists were spreading about how Iran and Russia had saved Syria.

In fact, the entire narrative around Syria is actually very important to understand because that is when we really saw the ZAnon + AssasAnon + TehranAnon propaganda get trotted out to explain away Assad’s defeat by the so-called rebel groups and Russia and Iran’s complicity in partitioning Syria. Now though, with the benefit of a decade under my belt, I think I have a pretty good read on what is going on. This article will explain what happened then and what is happening now in very simple and easy-to-understand terms. I haven’t seen anyone else provide such an overview.

First, we should cover the latest updates: the big one is that Assad might already be dead at the time of me writing this article. There are reports that his plane was shot down. Either way, he was apparently in the process of fleeing Damascus, which, like the other cities, fell without a shot to the “rebels”. The entire Syrian army appears to have just disbanded. The videos on Twitter over the last week have been crazy. The latest info drop is with the rebels storming the airport without encountering resistance. It is all over for Assad’s Syria. The end of an era.

And we’ve got some new memes coming out about our brave lion Bashar al-Assad:

But I don’t want to talk about Assad and his Potemkin government and country too for that matter. Let’s talk about how Russia (and Iran) betrayed him instead.

The Planned Demolition of Syria

First off, rumors that Putin is fleeing the two bases that Russia set up in the region — Tartus and Khmeimin.

I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but, well …

In contrast, chances are, most of the shills who are claiming that Assad has lured the Turkish rebels into a brilliant trap by surrendering major cities without a fight do not even understand themselves what is going on. They simply read from a script, so perhaps we should be understanding of their plight. Because the cope that has been put out over the last week has been absolute off the charts.

The real interesting stuff is happening behind the screaming headlines and the denial and the cope. It is very possible that Moscow is not only simply losing Syria, but actually helping Syria be taken. This increases the order of the magnitude of the betrayal substantially. We can break down the betrayal into tiers:

Tier 1: Moscow and Tehran and Damascus were simply taken by surprise, too weak to do anything (INCOMPETENCE)

Tier 2: Moscow and Tehran pulled support for Damascus even though they knew what was coming (WITHDRAWAL)

Tier 3: Moscow and/or Tehran turned against Damascus and sided with the Satanist-Globalist-Analists (BETRAYAL)

All three tiers are actually betrayals, but you get the point I am making, I hope. Like, for example, the reports about the Russian airforce bombing SAA and Iranian bases for some reason.

— 🇷🇺/🇸🇾/🇮🇷 NEW: Russian aviation begins bombing SAA / Iranian weapons storage & production facilities across Syria, to prevent material falling into the hands of HTS

Middle_East_Spectator

This is kind of a big deal, and I haven’t seen anyone else teasing out the implications.

But we can easily prove that Tier 2 (WITHDRAWAL) is a lock. Like, that is the baseline understanding that the facts as we have them now prove without any reservations. We know at least that this was a Tier 2 event. Not one battle was fought for the cities of Syria.

— ❗️🇸🇾 NEW: 'Generals of the SAA ordered their units to withdraw from Homs without the approval of Assad, after contacting Gulf states and Western mediators' – Damascus-based media outlet 'Sawt al-Aasimah'

This simply does not happen in a real war.

All the evidence points towards a pre-planned and controlled handover of the Syrian state. In these entire 10 days, I have not seen a single battle. I don't know by whom, but this was 100% orchestrated.

So, again, this was all planned and executed to ensure a rapid overthrow of the Assad government. Now, the more interesting question is trying to figure out who in the Axis of Resistance collaborated with the enemy and to what extent. That’s really all that there is left to do here. Obviously, Moscow did not provide any military support over the last two weeks. Nor did Tehran. And the SAA appears to have rebelled against Assad. However, it is unclear who the real traitor is here. It is possible that the military or elements in the military were rebelling initially to prevent this takeover plan from being carried out.

This is speculation on my part, and I admit that.

But there were old Ba’athist hardliners in the military who were against Assad because of his coziness with his esteemed Western partners in the early days. They probably had enough of him. That is, at least, what many Russian analysts are saying:

The military leaders do not want to fight for Bashar al-Assad, his soldiers and, apparently, since he did not want to address the population of Syria, neither did he. And yet, relatively recently, there were elections, and 95.19% of the population voted for him. This often happens.

Curiously, Assad was supposed to give an emergency address that was instead done by the head of the army, who promised to defend Damascus and claimed that the rebels were being destroyed. Another piece to the puzzle, perhaps.

Finally, in some parts of SAA controlled Syria, they simply cut direct deals with the rebels, like in Derah, to surrender the town in exchange for being allowed a withdrawal. What happens to the SAA now, I wonder? Will they be reformed like the Iraqis were by the Israels and the Gulf States and the Americans into a new ISIS-type muzzrat terror group to be used against Iran next?

We will see.

Assad the Asset (of the West)

The problem of popularity wasn’t necessarily that Assad is/was an Alawite and that the majority of the country is not. The problem is that Assad was really hated by most Syrians for looting the country so thoroughly with his crime clan and the heavy-handed repression that his secret police and paramilitary squads employed to keep the “peace”. Maybe the mild-mannered and meek Assad had nothing to do with the looting and racketeering and terror, but he simply couldn’t do anything to stop the Alawite and Damascus-based business mafias monopolizing everything and extort the population. The only problem with that version of the story is that Assad has been in power for almost a quarter of a century and had the firm political legacy of his father behind him. And yet, this didn’t seem to help. Nor was he ever ideologically opposed to the West in any way. Like Putin, he often begged to be forgiven and let back in the club. Everything was on the table:

Remember: Assad got his start in power as a Western asset, a Liberalizer (like Putin) who deliberately adopted policies to weaken his country and their standing in the region. One of his early betrayals was the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon. Before that, he helped Bush in his war against Saddam Hussein and the dismantling of the old Ba’athist network in Iraq. Assad also let the CIA set up terrorist training camps in Syria, as well as the infamous black prison extra-rendition torture sites that they were running all over the region. In no small part, they were interrogating old Arab nationalist officers and trying to get them to turn and run these new terrorist groups that they were setting up all over the Middle East. I leave you with this clip of Assad at the Arab League laughing at Ghadaffi warning that Washington will murder all of the Arab leaders assembled in the room if they do not band together.

There is a lot more that can be said about Assad and his disastrous, downright treacherous management of Syria, but we will get back on track and focus on the Russia connection instead for today. I hope someone else will cover that story because I run the Slavland Chronicles here, not the Swarthland Chronicles and I have my hands full trying to explain the full depth of Putin’s treachery without also taking on the entire lore of the swarthlands.

To anyone who wants to dig deeper on this topic though, you have to start as far back as his father Hafez, at least, and then compare and contrast what went down during these two periods of rule.

To really get an understanding of the situation though, you need to study the immediate post-Ottoman period and the rise of Arab nationalism in the region and the Anglo-Israeli effort to destroy it using radical Abrahamism (Jewish and Christian Zionism, Islamic Fundamentalism).

Anyway.

…

The Turkish SMO

The “SMO” nature of this war immediately jumps out. Many Russian commentators are comparing and contrasting this SMO to the other, ongoing on in Ukraine and Russia.

What is happening in Syria is a tragedy. And not only for the Syrians, but also for Russia.

But it should be noted that this can be called a healthy person's SVO.

If we translate the words of a colleague who wrote about Syria (https://t.me/zhivoff/18333) into the realities of the SVO, it will turn out like this:

😀Kiev is in operational encirclement... They take everything almost without a fight. The tragic end of Ukrainian oligarchs and the clan of their protege Zelensky. The situation is developing so quickly that Ukraine's allies do not have time to react... 😀

— isn't this what our "bosses" were counting on when they started the SVO? But dreams are one thing, and reality is something completely different, as it turned out.

The only difference between the SMOs is that it worked for Turkey and friends and didn’t work for Russia, which is what the sarcastic poster is pointing out.

Why though!?

Well, first of all, the push on Kiev was not a feint as we have been told, but an HTS-style SMO with the goal of achieving a political coup. And it succeeded, actually. The took some heavy losses, sure, but they got the job done and took the positions that they were supposed to reach in time. However, instead of actually claiming the victory or doing something kinetic with the soldiers parked outside of Kiev, Putin signed a treacherous agreement with Zelensky, bequeathing Donbass to Ukraine again in exchange for more economic and political power being transferred to the Donbass mafia clans and promises not to join NATO. Sensing this weakness, Boris Johnson and other NATO leaders convinced Kiev to trash the agreement and fight a real war.

Putin had revealed himself to be totally craven by a) squandering the SMO b) asking for very weak terms and c) not setting up any guarantees/insurance and d) failing to take many cities in the SMO.

We’ve talked about the first three points ad nauseum on the blog at this point, so let’s focus on point d instead. How is that Aleppo and Homs and Hama and Damascus were taken without a shot? Simple: agents were deployed to these cities ahead of time to open the gates of these cities. The southern military grouping in Ukraine succeeded with their task and took Kherson without firing a shot this way. It simply involves either assassinating or bribing or coercing locals military commanders to not put up a fight. In contrast, Kharkov was a failure that turned into a trap for Russian troops who rolled into the city thinking that the fix was in only to be fired upon. Similar results were reported in all the other major cities. The reason why this aspect of the SMO is not discussed is because of ZAnon propaganda that waved these failures away as being part of a brilliant maneuver to lure NATO into a prolonged war in Donbass. They really really really don’t want people asking questions about what went down in those early days.

Because, who was in charge of opening the gates to these cities?

Why, that would be the FSB, of course, which was tasked with “SMOing” Ukraine via the 5th Service department:

And Ukraine as a whole was put in the hands of Surkov, who ended up falling out of grace with Putin soon after. Remember: Strelkov even specifically pointed the finger at Surkov in his famous “39 Questions” for which he was sent to prison by Putin. More on Surkov here:

But what were Putin’s goals in Syria in the first place? Perhaps now we can re-examine the reason that Russia was even there? Yes, now that it is too late, perhaps people are ready to listen.

The Russian Plan to Partition Syria

The sad reality is that Syria was already partitioned in 2016. a united Syria was a fig leaf put over a corpse. By Moscow and Tehran and Ankara that is. Despite this, we were told that Putin and the mullahs had “saved” Syria, despite the fact that they had actually just cut a deal with the terrorist and rebels and Israelis (but I repeat myself) to occupy different parts of the country and simply not shoot at each other. A deal that the Israelis often violated, I might add, and to which Putin would only shrug as another Russian serviceman was sent in a bodybag to be buried at home. After Putin’s “saving”, the only thing that remained to be done in Syria was to formalize this partition. Perhaps we need a refresher on what happened in 2016 before we dive into that part though. Nikola Mikovich had a good write-up on it. Here:

Russia got involved in the Syrian Civil War only in September 2015, when Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was on the verge of collapse. In February of that year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Minsk Agreements, effectively putting the Donbas war, which had broken out in the spring of 2014, “on hold”.

One month earlier, pro-Russian rebels were amid a military offensive, and the Ukrainian military was on the verge of collapse. But Putin decided to freeze the conflict and focus on Syria instead.

In October 2016, former Russian general Leonid Ivashov explained on Russian state-owned Channel One that the Kremlin’s engagement in the Syrian conflict was “critical to prevent the construction of the Quatar-Turkey pipeline, which would be catastrophic for Gazprom”.

Besides that, in the war-torn Middle Eastern country, Russia and the United States reportedly had the same opponent – the Islamic State (IS). The SAA would have had difficulty defeating the IS if it hadn't been for Russia and the Wagner Group. In 2015-2016, Russian forces, along with Hezbollah and other Iran-affiliated groups, also played an important role in the battle for Aleppo, significant parts of which were under the control of the Western-backed Syrian militias.

Indeed, Moscow and Tehran helped Assad stabilise the situation in Syria. The conflict was put “on hold” in 2020 when the last significant battles occurred. After that, Russia began preparing to invade Ukraine, while anti-Assad rebels, strongly backed by Turkey, used the “break” to consolidate, rearm, and continue with what they see as the Syrian revolution. The SAA apparently did nothing to prepare for another round of fighting.

2024 Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, with no strategic goals achieved. Hezbollah was defeated by Israel, whose military killed not only the group’s entire leadership but also dozens of top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders in Syria.

The Wagner Group, following the murder of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been integrated into the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya), with some of its elements deployed to Africa. Assad, therefore, is unlikely to be able to count on its help either.

His SAA seems to be on its own against well-armed and highly motivated Turkey-backed rebel forces. There are, however, two things that can prevent further falls in SAA-controlled cities. This time, it is Iran, rather than Russia, that could play a pivotal role in a new stage of the Syrian Civil War.

[NOTE: Iran ended up pulling out all support.]

If Assad survives politically and biologically, it will likely be due to Tehran’s support. However, whether Iran has the capacity and political will to help the Syrian leader remains highly uncertain.

Also, a potential deal between Putin and the West could halt the rebels’ offensive, although that does not mean the SAA will recapture Aleppo or any other vital cities it has lost in the past few days. In other words, Putin would have to make serious concessions to the United States and its allies in Ukraine to be allowed to “save face” in Syria. But how likely is such an outcome?

Assad’s defeat would automatically signify Moscow’s defeat. If the Western-backed rebels seize power in Damascus, Russia will have to immediately shut down its Khmeimim Air Base in the Latakia area and the naval facility in Tartus. Since Russia and Syria have no land connection, the Kremlin would be forced to ask NATO member Turkey for permission to allow its vessels to pass through the Bosporus and Dardanelles on their way back to Russia.

To get the green light from Ankara, Putin may have to make concessions to his “friend”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But that’s not all. On their way through the Black Sea, Russian vessels would become an easy target for the Ukrainian military.

All of the Kremlin's choices seem difficult. To avoid another large-scale humiliation, whether in Ukraine or Syria, Putin will have to pay a heavy price. Since reaching deals with the West (and then accusing his Western partners of “deceiving him” and “leading him by the nose”) seems to be the core of his reign, he is likely to try to use his old strategy: making painful concessions to the West and selling it to his audience as another “geopolitical victory.”

Syria and Bashar al-Assad could quickly become the most significant “collateral damage” of Putin’s approach. Given that Russia is not in a position to seriously help Damascus unless Iran intervenes, Assad will have a hard time stopping the rebels’ offensive. As a result, Russia could eventually lose Syria as an ally.

Pro-Kremlin analysts and propagandists have already started blaming Assad and the SAA for “not learning the lessons” from the Ukraine war and preparing for another round of fighting against Western-backed rebels. In reality, Assad is not an autonomous actor but a leader who remains utterly dependent on Moscow and Tehran. Therefore, for everything happening in Assad-controlled parts of Syria, Russia and Iran, as his significant sponsors, bear full responsibility.

Quite aware of that, many pro-Assad Syrians have already started blaming the Kremlin for the role it is playing in their country. They are unhappy about the fact that Moscow never prevents Israel from bombing SAA positions. Now that militants from the Jabhat al-Nusra group are advancing toward Hama, speculations in Syria are growing that Russia might betray Assad, which would have dramatic consequences for the Alawites, Christians, and other minorities in the Middle Eastern country.

One thing is for sure: under the current geopolitical circumstances, where Russia repeatedly shows weakness and suffers humiliation, it cannot have both Ukraine and Syria. It remains to be seen what Putin will decide to sacrifice. Maybe both?

Grim stuff.

But Putin betrayed Syria in 2016 already with the “peace” deal they tied to force through. Putin would even go so far as to bomb the SAA and Wagner when they started making too much progress against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Well, at least Shoigu did anyway.

Before even that though, in 2015, Putin was already arming Syrian rebels in their fight against ISIS. Here:

“I will particularly note that the work by our aviation group helps unite the efforts of Syrian government forces and the Free Syrian Army. Currently, its different units have over 5,000 people, and just like the regular forces, they are conducting offensive operations against terrorists in the provinces of Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Raqqa. In addition, we support them from the air, same as we do with the Syrian army, assisting them with weapons, ammunition and materials.”

Which … in retrospect, is rather strange if you are claiming that the SAA is the only legitimate military authority in the region and fighting to ensure the territorial sovereignty and oneness of the Syrian Arab Republic. Putin put direct pressure on Assad to back off and not fight the rebel groups that Moscow and Washington and Ankara (and others) were playing footsie with under the table. He did this by cutting off military support for the SAA, forcing Assad to negotiation and make concessions. It was, of course, spun as a great “peace” gesture by 5D Putin.

Putin probably got this whole strategy from Macron, who also armed pretty much all of the rebel groups at various points ostensibly to fight ISIS as well. Here:

“During my recent visit to Paris, the President of France, Mr Hollande, voiced an interesting idea that he thought is worth a try, namely, to have President Assad’s government troops join forces with the Free Syrian Army. True, we do not know yet where this army is and who heads it, but if we take the view that these people are part of the healthy opposition, if it were possible to have them join in the fight against terrorist organisations such as ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and others, this would help pave the way to a future political settlement in Syria.”

For their part, Putin and friends were rather honest when they insisted that they were actually just in Syria to fight “terrorism” not to do any of that other stuff that propagandists claimed that they were secretly planning on doing. ISIS turned out to be very useful to everyone involved because it gave them a propaganda carte blanche to just do whatever and say it was an anti-ISIS emergency measure that had to be done. That is how Putin justified the Free Syrian Army (rebels fighting for the partition of Syria and the overthrow of Assad) calling in Russian air strikes. Here:

And here’s VVP boasting about how the FSA was calling in RF airstrikes:

“We have even worked together with the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Russian aviation has conducted several strikes on the targets identified by the FSA. We excluded areas, which had been indicated by FSA commanders as being under their control. By the way, this fact proves once again that we are not bombing the so‑called moderate opposition or the civilian population.”

So it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that Putin was trying to force Assad to sign the formalized partition of Syria once you understand that Putin armed and supported the FSA and was cooperating with NATO (even taking advice!) while in Syria.

The treaty was downright treasonous, and so even Assad couldn’t sign it.

Andrew Korybko

did a very detailed analysis of the document almost a decade about. The analysis is prescient, but it is also very long, so I cannot reproduce it in full here. The full link is here. There are a lot of interesting details in the Putin-written document.

But, essentially, Putin wanted to impose decentralization, allow for the Golan Heights to be given up to Israel, Kurdish autonomy, bribes to non-ISIS rebels, hate speech legislation, disavowing the Ba’ath nationalism project, introduce the authority of the ICC, grant immunity to key politicians, Assad stepping down after his term is up, and some other interesting ideas. This was all probably proposed to then present to his handlers in Washington as proof of what a useful guy Putin was for them and their agenda. Perhaps Putin wanted to “trade” Syria for Ukraine as some analysts have pointed out. Putin always holds up his end of the bargain, but the West never does though. In the case of Syria though, Assad dug his heels in and refused to allow Putin to partition Syria and present it with a bow to Washington. Of course, the proles and peasants are told that Putin went in to save the Christians!!! and fulfill the BRICS prophecies or something, so they won’t bother to read the link, naturally.

I bring this all up explain why Syria was already defacto partitioned and why Putin may have left Assad out to dry. Here are the possible options so far:

1. Putin was upset at Assad for not signing the new constitution, embarrassing him in front of his handlers in Langley

2. Putin was offered a better deal by Turkey

3. Putin successfully “traded” Syria for something else which we will hear about in the coming weeks

4. Putin had no reason for preventing the oil and gas pipeline in Syria any more because Nord Stream II was bombed

5. Putin was offered a better deal by Israel

6. Putin is in such a weak position that he simply fled

Or maybe this is all a clever patriotic trap?

The Next Domino to Fall

Well, let’s just get the obvious out of the way. Gaza never stood a chance and didn’t put up much of a fight anyway. Those same lying liars who claimed all those wonderful things about the Axis of Resistance and the Lion of Damascus were all claiming that the Gazan fighters had destroyed the IDF advance several times over, forcing them to retreat disgracefully. None of that true, and if you don’t see why this narrative is absurd, then you are very very stupid. How is a glorified open-air prison camp supposed to fight off one of the most advanced and psychotic militaries in the world? Especially when they weren’t getting any support from any Muslim brethren nations? But whatever.

Point being: Gaza is cooked to perfection. Stick a fork in it and turn it over because they are DONE.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah surrendered South Lebanon to the IDF. And, well, Syria has now been taken by Israeli allies, the HTS forces who are run out of Ankara, Turkey. Hezbollah’s chief came out and said/predicted that, “without Syria, Palestine is lost”. I think we can take this to mean that he was predicting that the IDF sets its sights on the West Bank next in their wars. With Hezbollah, Assad, and Hamas out of they way, they might set their eyes on a bigger target next though: Iran. We will see.

There is no “Axis of Resistance” though.

An “Axis of Impotence”, maybe.

Putin has sent more weapons to Turkey than they have to the SAA or Iran. Turkey has S-400s, while Iran doesn’t. If the Americans and Israelies start bombing Iran, there won’t be much to stop them. There were rumors and fake news stories of air defense being sent from Moscow to Tehran for years now, true. But this isn’t happening and the people who say this don’t understand the close ties that Putin and his oligarchs have with Tel-Aviv and Ankara, who would never allow Putin to arm Tehran ahead of their attacks.

But hey, why bother speculating about this?

It doesn’t matter how many times that the doomer/blackpilled/pessimist position is proven right, people will still refuse to accept the next prediction as valid or at least possible and given in good faith. Instead, they will simply call people speaking difficult truths CIA-Satanists!!! and then spend the next few months pretending that Putin has cleverly defeated the Satanists in Syria. The Axis of Resistance aren’t any good at fighting or de-dollarizing or decolonizing, but they are really really good at pretending that they are.

The Black Colonel makes a prediction on this front:

I think that now there will be bravura reports from Russian media and leaders about the huge victory of the Russian Federation in Syria. Apparently, a VICTORY PARADE on Red Square awaits us after all!

Now we are waiting for a delegation of respected partners from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham at the next St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Moreover, the business of producing captagon should not depend on a change of ownership on that side.

Of course, it will be interesting to observe the turn of our propaganda in explaining what happened. So that Russia's victory is not questioned. It will be difficult, but we believe in it, we will find a way to cope.

They’ve been claiming that the fall of Aleppo was a social media psyop for the last week now. No, really. Here is what they were saying less than 8 hours ago:

I bring this all up to mock these people, yes. But I also want to explain once and for all that these people are not your friends. They lie to cover for their bosses’ betrayals. You do not become a better person by believing in lies. This might be difficult for many Abrahamists to hear, I know, but believing in nice-sounding lies about good guys defeating immoral Satan-Nazi-Anal guys doesn’t make you a better person.

It just makes you even more of a gullible chump than you already are.

…

Oh, by the way, I think some of you on-the-fence guys should support my blog financially now. I’ve been saying that Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Hamas, would fold like cheap suits for like a year now. I will be proven right about Iran as well. And then we can have a discussion about China as well.

But only if you support the blog NOW.

How many people had the guts to really stick their necks out there and sound the alarm about Putin and his friends in the #Resistance? Not many. The real victim in all of this is me, frankly.

Well, and the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are about to have an even harder time now than they’ve been having under Assad’s kleptocrat government. Not to worry though, chances are you’ll meet many of these Syrian refugees and many other Syrian refugees from all over Africa and Central Asia and China that will be moved into your neighborhood in the coming months in the name of Tolerance Abrahamic Antifa Jesus Values. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Putin has decided to import another couple of hundred thousand Arabs as well! It is simply the moral Christian thing to do, you see?

In fact, our brave resistance leaders are so moral and Christlike that they literally don’t even fight back.

Brings a tear to my eye, it does.