The Empire Stalled: Which Russian Puppet Will Fall After Assad?

A window of opportunity has opened.

The Syrian regime has fallen in 11 days. Do the developments in the Middle East influence events in Ukraine? Which Russian puppet will fall after Bashar al-Assad? Who can take advantage of Russia's weakness?

The Charter97.org website spoke about this with Ukrainian political scientist, professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Petro Oleshchuk:

— Naturally, there will be direct changes in the war in Ukraine. Small contingents of Russian troops that the Russian Federation was able to withdraw from Syria will be sent to the war in Ukraine. These are relatively small contingents, but still.

The events in Syria, from a reputational point of view, will negatively affect the perception of the Putin regime both in Russia and in general. After all, the Kremlin has recently been actively promoting the idea in the West that they allegedly have some kind of unlimited resource and are ready for an "eternal war" against the West. And the only way to stop it is to accept their terms.

The Russian Federation has shown that even the Assad regime, which is very important to it, and into which a colossal amount of resources was invested, was abandoned. And how many Russian soldiers were lost restoring the Assad regime's control over strategic parts of Syria? Now they have abandoned it because the Russian Federation simply did not have the resources to wage war on the scale it could before.

This is a fairly clear signal, along with the involvement of North Korean soldiers, that in fact the Russians do not have any unlimited resources. Their resources are more than finite, which Donald Trump noted, having made several posts about this on his social media page.

The perception of Russia as a steamroller that sweeps away everything in its path will change significantly. Again, the situation in the Middle East will change, which will not directly affect Ukraine, but indirectly - yes.

All this will have an influence, but it is unlikely to be instantaneous. We are talking about some processes that will be launched now and will affect the overall situation after some time

– Another ally of Russia - Iran - has suffered a serious defeat. How much has the so-called "axis of evil" weakened since the fall of Assad?

– Let me start with the fact that this is Iran's second defeat in a row. The first was the defeat of Hezbollah. And now we cannot say that Hezbollah is a serious force in the Middle East. Its defeat led to the defeat of the Assad regime, and Iran lost most of its influence in the Middle East.

Of course, some influence remains, but it is completely incomparable to what it was before. All of Iran's expansionist ambitions have been largely defeated. They still have the Houthis in Yemen, but Israel is now planning to deal with them.

— Will this trigger any changes in Iran itself?

— It is difficult to say yet. Iran is too closed a regime to analyze it. I will note that there were rumors about the difficult situation of Ali Khamenei.

In any case, he is not a young man, so in the foreseeable future Iran will expect some kind of change of this very first person. These defeats can also affect the internal Iranian political struggle. But it is too early to say.

Now Iran will be busy recovering from all these defeats, rebooting, changing its policy and, probably, this is a signal to all other allies of the Russian Federation that it will not protect anyone. It is ready to trade, sell oil in exchange for any weapons or mercenaries, but it will not directly protect anyone. Probably, the only thing closer to Putin than the Assad regime is the Lukashenka regime.

— Erdogan is called the main beneficiary of the events in Syria. He clearly waited for Russia to weaken and provided assistance to the Syrian rebels. Are there any spots on the world map where Russia's weakness can still be exploited?

— There are many such spots. But few have the political will to do so.

Erdogan has such a will, he has repeatedly stabbed Putin in the back before. So he simply took advantage of the moment.

Now that the empire is bogged down in Ukraine, everyone has an open window of opportunity. Everyone understands that the Russians will not be able to quickly transfer troops or carry out any operations. Today, many can break away from the empire and set out on their own at a relatively low cost to themselves.

If the protesters in Georgia had been more active, I think they could have destroyed the regime, and Russia would not have done anything to them.

Belarus, where "elections" will be held in January, also falls into this window of opportunity. I don't know what this would have ultimately resulted in, but in any case, it is a window of opportunity.

Absolutely all of Russian forces are now bogged down in Ukraine. Everything they have is thrown there. Syria has shown this.

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