Assad in Moscow: A message to Israel and the West?

A few days ago, on 24 July, Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad paid a visit to Moscow for a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, which was only reported after the event. “Reported,” though, is almost hyperbole. While the visit was not kept entirely under wraps, the information released about it was so scant that it can only make you wonder more what it was all about. Clearly, discussions between the two leaders must have gone much beyond the polite, even demonstratively warm but still formulaic greetings exchanged before cameras. Even those, however, contained a hint or two regarding the visit’s purpose, about which more below. One speculation shared by many commentators is that the visit had something to do with ongoing efforts to facilitate a reconciliation between Syria and Turkey. While this may well be the case, it is also very likely that there were other important aspects to it, especially concerning Israel, the West, and their ongoing aggression.

For starters, however, let’s get a traditional piece of Western mainstream media nonsense out of the way first: One thing this Assad-Putin meeting was definitely not was some sort of get-together of two international outcasts, desperate for besties in their friendless isolation. For Russia, despite the West’s worst – and most shortsighted – efforts, isolation has never been a real thing. In general, the West has managed to only isolate itself with this policy, while the much larger rest of the world, in particular the Global South, has never joined the effort. Even absurd attempts to use the International Criminal Court to go after Putin himself have merely undermined the credibility of that court.