What Putin Has Done for Assad

On Monday evening in Syria, Bashar al-Assad answered a ringing phone at his palace overlooking Damascus. The caller was Vladimir Putin, to whom Assad owed his government’s strong position at the negotiating table in Geneva, where another fragile round of peace talks with the battered Syrian opposition had begun that morning. Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Muallem, had prefaced the Geneva meetings by threatening the opposition and the United Nations envoy to Syria; contrary to the text of a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Russia had agreed to, Muallem warned that any mention of Assad’s eventual replacement would cross “a red line” for negotiations. He added, “We will not talk with anyone who wants to discuss the Presidency.”

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Related:
Comment from the March 7, 2016, Issue
The Unaccountable Death of Boris Nemtsov
A Moment for Hope in Syria