The turbulent times of change and geopolitical conflicts in which we live, not those of our petty political daily life, but of the agitated world, which seems to be awakening from lethargy, are increasingly sharpening attention to history, to the delicate balances between religion and politics, to the important decisions that we make on a personal level and that politicians must make.
The more honest and enlightened a person is, especially if he has dedicated himself to politics, the more his decisions may turn out to be the right ones.
Against the backdrop of these thoughts about complex relationships and against the backdrop of recent events in our beloved and troubled Syria, I share an interesting analysis by Stefano Caprio from the Asia News portal. (I have allowed myself very light editing and explanations in brackets to the translation)
RUSSIA AND SYRIA, TOGETHER FOREVER
On December 12 of this year, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia expressed his “personal sympathy and full support“ to his beloved brother and Patriarch of Antioch John X, and with him to the clergy and believers of the Church, which represents the entire Christian East. This was expressed to the representative of the Patriarchate of Antioch in Moscow, Metropolitan Niphon of Philippopolis, in the temple “Christ the Savior“ in the Russian capital. President Vladimir Putin has offered shelter to the now former dictator of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, in a luxury apartment near the Kremlin, and deputies of the Moscow Duma are calling for him to immediately receive Russian citizenship.
According to Patriarch Kirill's advisor, Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, "The Church of Antioch has always represented the true patriotic spirit of Syria," recalling the words of John X, according to which "Christians are the true natives of these lands, all the others came later." The Syrian Patriarchate is the only one of the fifteen autocephalous Orthodox Churches and the only one of the five ancient ecumenical patriarchates that has always supported the Moscow Church in any situation, even in the current phase of schism with Constantinople and the other ancient patriarchates of Alexandria and Jerusalem, although the Patriarchate of Jerusalem maintains a fairly neutral position. After all, the Antiochians had in the past inspired the establishment of the Moscow Patriarchate.
In 1586, the then Patriarch of Antioch, Joachim V, arrived in Moscow to seek material assistance for survival under Ottoman rule and was met by the Tsar's unscrupulous advisor, Boris Godunov, with whom they further developed the plan to establish the policy of the "Third Rome" at its highest level, religiously and ecclesiastically. Joachim V was sheltered in Moscow (as Assad is today) and prepared the visit of his brother Jeremiah II, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who in turn came to seek assistance in the Russian capital in 1588. Jeremiah II was placed in the most distinguished chambers of the Kremlin, where Godunov literally held him captive for seven months, until he agreed to sign the decree establishing the Russian Patriarchate, which would stand authoritatively and on a par with the ancient five patriarchates (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome). The creation of the Russian Patriarchate was highly desired for the strengthening of Russia and opened the way to the concept of “national Orthodoxy“, which today finds its strongest reflection in the holy wars of Putin and his imitators.
Jeremiah II was then released and on his return he sought support among the Russian Orthodox of Poland, proposing to them to establish the Kiev Patriarchate, the ancient capital of Russia, which was the true source of Christianity in these lands and which would act as a counterweight to the claims of Moscow. The loyalty of the Polish king Sigismund III to the Roman Catholic throne, together with the powerful influence of the Jesuits, transformed this project into the Union of Brest with the Pope in 1596, which generated the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has been projected on subsequent history, right up to the present day, between the two souls of Russian Christianity, Eastern and Western. Meanwhile, the Patriarch of Antioch and his successors found in Moscow the main point of departure for their own religious and national identity, going so far in the seventeenth century as to propose a form of “Russian papacy” that would offer the ancient Eastern patriarchs satellite territories in the vicinity of Moscow.
In the current rediscovery of “traditional values”, these ancient stories from the late Middle Ages find relevance in the face of Russian fears of losing their role in controlling the Middle East after the Islamist victory over the pro-Moscow Syrian regime. The patriarch's concern expresses the deepest feelings of the entire Russian political and military leadership, which is balanced by the jubilation of the Ukrainian, which takes credit for supporting the Islamic revolution, to corner the Russians.
The Russians had deployed their troops in Syria in 2015, investing hundreds of billions of rubles and organizing the most aggressive campaigns, those of the “Chechen butchers” and the Wagner Group mercenaries, led by “Putin’s chef,” the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, who later became the main actors in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In a sense, Moscow’s support for Damascus was the training ground for Russia’s return to the role of a major player on the world geopolitical stage. In 2016, Russia even received the blessing of Pope Francis, who, meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Havana in February, agreed to a joint “humanitarian action” for Christians and Syrian refugees, which allowed the Russians to consider themselves officially responsible for protecting this territory, where the Pope himself had blocked the entry of Americans with the prayer vigils of the previous year.
Of the five ancient patriarchates, with the exception of Antioch, only Rome is today an interlocutor of Moscow, in a convergence of attention towards the East, still in search of a true definition.
It is now difficult to say whether Russia will be able to maintain its military bases in Syria, and the Holy See has made it clear through the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, that it is “impressed by the speed of events“, hoping that there will be respect for Christian minorities and awaiting developments, a statement almost identical to that of the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Moreover, it is not just a matter of fear of the election of the new Islamist government in Damascus - remaining in Syria could be a threat to everyone, Russians and Armenians, Orthodox Christians, Chaldeans, Protestants and Catholics.
The loss of Russian bases would also lead to a serious logistical problem for the Kremlin, for contacts with its groups in Africa, heirs to the Wagner Group business, which rely on Syria for Mediterranean transit. The Russians would be forced to expand their structures in Libya or Sudan, but at the moment this seems quite complicated, since there are no official relations with these countries, which, in turn, are still seeking very uncertain stability. Russian military structures in Africa are not sufficiently developed to provide satisfactory protection for the Kremlin's interests, as all commentators claim. Russian planes heading to Africa have so far flown along the air corridor over the Caspian Sea, Iran and Iraq, stopping in Syria to reach Khartoum and from there across Africa, and now it is not known exactly what they will do.
Syria is Russia's bridge to the Mediterranean and Africa, also considering the dispersal of the Black Sea Fleet after the Ukrainian drone attacks, and now “new uncontrolled rebellions may also arise in the African countries that the Russians are struggling to control“, according to Novaya Gazeta correspondent Denis Korotkov.
Today it is difficult to estimate how many Russians are still deployed in Syria: in 2018 there was talk of three thousand army soldiers and two thousand Wagner mercenaries, while today, after three years of war in Ukraine, the estimate does not exceed a thousand units, including a hundred observers, scattered throughout the country. In addition to the soldiers, there must be over seven thousand Russians in the whole of Syria, and the military (and non-military) structures are very diverse and intermingle with the state structures of the now fallen regime.
Officially, Russia intervened in Syria to fight the Islamic fundamentalists of ISIS, which allowed Moscow to restore some of the international credit lost with the start of the hybrid war in Ukraine in 2014, thus also avoiding new sanctions. Since then, a lot has flowed: Moscow has collected more sanctions than any other country in the world with the war in Ukraine, in which it involved (above all) the Muslims of the Caucasus and Asian Russia, extolling them as “moderate Islamic patriots”. The same name that today is attributed to the representatives of the jihadist group Hay'at Tahrir ash-Sham ruling in Damascus, the same ones who managed to do in a week what the Russians failed to do in Ukraine in three years. Putin cannot afford to throw away twenty years of efforts to restore Russia's strategic role in world geopolitics, to establish a “multipolar vision“ in place of Western hegemony, and will probably try to find a way to stay in Syria.
Moreover, Syria has already largely come under the control of Turkey, Russia's historical enemy for control of these territories, which today appears instead as the only possible ally in the search for new balances between the “Russian world“ and the “Turkish world“ . Erdogan's declared goal is the annulment of the autonomy of the Kurds in the north-east of Syria, but it is clear that we have entered a new phase of division of dominance over the vast border territories between East and West, between Moscow and Istanbul, as at the time of the formation of the Russian Patriarchate, in relation to the Antiochian.