Michael G Swifte

Let us be very clear. If Russia is to be given the green light to effectively occupy southern Syria - it will be done in collaboration with Israel. Israel will benefit because there will be a military force that will maintain security in the south while Israel expands north-eastwards towards the David's Corridor with Kurdish and US cooperation. This ultimately means that Russia is an ally of Israel and if you are an ally of Israel, you are automatically coming to agreement with the US deep state on some level. Since the fall of Damascus, Israel has lobbied the US to enable Russian presence to remain in Syria. Now, the Russian presence is consolidating and potentially expanding to include the north-east, the south, and the coastal region, thus utterly containing Erdogan. For Russians. revenge is a dish served cold - when Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi S-24 in 2015, everybody asked 'why no retaliation?'. This is the retaliation that could not happen without Zionist influence. Russia has control of the anti-HTS militia in the south of Syria since 2018. They were the first to enter Damascus in 2024. Russia will potentially take back control of these forces to patrol the south, while maintaining their surveillance posts on the border with occupied Golan that were increased in 2024, leading up to the November HTS attack on Aleppo. At the time many people were questioning the Russian role as a replacement for UNIFIL on the Golan demarcation line. Many also asked if Russia would intercept Israeli missiles or would Russia defend Israel from the Resistance attacks from Syrian territory? Questions were being raised about the Russian agenda from 2017 onwards. What is now unfolding does suggest that Russia was never an ideological ally for Syria or for the Resistance. On the contrary, Russia would have preferred Syria pivot towards Saudi Arabia and eventually, normalise with Israel. What we now see unfolding is the true Russian agenda without the impediment of a Syrian government that had blocked their advancement. With Jolani desperate for Russian weapons and protection from many perspectives - we see the alliance between Russia and Israel being blatantly displayed for all to see. Anyone who tries to dismiss this as Putin 5D or 10D chess is not seeing the writing on the wall that was there long before 2024. This is the new paradigm in Syria and it should send a strong message to all who ally with Russia, that Russian interests are the priority and that Russian and US deep states are not perhaps the enemies that they are portrayed as. They will not ever be allies but from a realpolitik perspective, they will come to agreements on the policing of Syria, perhaps as part of the Ukraine deal now being hatched. I can add many personal conversations with Russian military and officials in Syria since 2017 that now make more sense in the current context. I will write something about these conversations and personal experiences very soon.

My latest for @ukcolumn A Terrorist Suicide Bombing in a Damascus Church Triggers a Wider Takfiri Purge of Syrian Minorities #Syria is burning, and Syrians are being massacred in cities and villages across the country. The pluralist fabric of Syrian society is being torn apart and plundered by the Western Al Qaeda assets. UK funding is enabling this hellscape and bloodshed. ukcolumn.org/blogs/a-terrori…