Earlier this year, Ukrainian forces helped Syrian rebels attack Russian mercenaries on the Golan Heights, an attack that was not reported in Western media but was carried out to stop Moscow from recruiting and training more terrorists and fighters for its own army.
Syria is a failed state and a theater of Moscow's failure. Putin still has military bases and thousands of soldiers there, years after sending troops to help President Bashar al-Assad crush a pro-democracy movement. Its civil war created the world's largest refugee crisis and became a testing ground for Russian weapons and tactics that are now ravaging Ukraine. It is also where Hamas and others trained to attack Israel, and where Moscow continues to execute plans aimed at destabilizing the Middle East, Africa, and Europe today.
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Just before October 7, Ukrainian intelligence had tipped off Prime Minister Netanyahu of an imminent attack from Syria, but he didn't heed the warning. But this time, Kiev's special forces destroyed Syrian training and recruitment centers because, as a Syrian veteran explained, “the enemies and killers of Syrians and Ukrainians are the same.” So are the Western countries.
Russia Destroys Aleppo 2015
Russia destroys Kiev 2022
The Ukrainian military did not ask anyone for permission to attack Syria, and a video obtained by the Kyiv Post and released on June 3 shows Ukrainian special forces, with the help of Syrian opponents of Bashar al-Assad's regime, blowing up Russian checkpoints, fortifications, foot patrols, and military convoys on the Golan Heights. Russian military recruitment centers have also been targeted by the Ukrainian military, having interviewed, trained, and “lent” soldiers to Russian troops and terrorist organizations for years. Syria is currently a favored deployment destination for Russian soldiers because it is not a battlefield. “For many Russian soldiers, Syria is like a vacation destination with a better pension,” one officer commented in an interview.
But Russia is no retirement haven either. A Politico article titled “Russia Fights Multiple Wars” reports that Russian troops have been fighting in Syria and neighboring countries for eight years, committing atrocities and showing no signs of slowing down. Russian forces have conducted indiscriminate attacks, killing U.S. troops in the region, and seem to be a Russian time bomb in the middle of a volatile region. The article states: [ongoing] The war in Syria is also a sad reminder that Western public interest is waning, and that the Syrian civil war, once at the center of U.S. foreign policy debate, continues long after most attention has shifted to other conflicts.”
Let us not forget, the Syrian civil war began in 2011 when the Arab Spring saw people marching for democratic rights, and came to a tragic end in 2020. President Assad and his Russian thugs brutally cracked down. According to the UNHCR, around 600,000 people died and Syria became the world's largest refugee crisis. The country simply disintegrated and no longer exists. “Since 2011, more than 14 million Syrians have fled their homes in search of safety. More than 7.2 million Syrians remain internally displaced, 70% of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance and 90% live below the poverty line. Around 5.5 million Syrian refugees live in five countries neighbouring Syria: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Germany is the largest host country outside Syria's neighbours, hosting more than 850,000 Syrian refugees.”
Syria's large and scattered diaspora: darker colors indicate greater density
Moscow continues to export murder and mayhem from there, and the country has now become a drug mecca, producing and exporting a stimulant called Kaptagon (also known as the “ISIS drug” or “poor man's cocaine”). “Assad's regime has now become more of a mafia than a government,” writes The Washington Post. “Unless Syria stops using drug trafficking to fund and fuel regional violence, the drug and terror epidemic across the region will only get worse.”
After October 7, Israel discovered that some of the captured Hamas fighters had been high on Captagon, possibly contributing to their murderous rampages. Syrian President Assad is now a drug lord, fabulously wealthy because his military has a monopoly on the production of addictive drugs, and a source of funding for Hamas and other organizations that distribute them. Syria also sells millions of these addictive pills across the Middle East, exporting further misery and violence to the region.
Russian malice is spreading from Syria to Libya. The eastern half of Libya is run by General Khalifa Haftar, an autocratic military officer who is a U.S. citizen and former CIA operative. He rebelled and made a deal with Moscow. In April, Russian ships began transporting thousands of tons of military equipment from the Russian port of Tartus, Syria, to the Libyan port of Tobruk. According to the news site Fawasel Media, the shipment included artillery pieces, armored personnel carriers, rocket launchers, and more.
Russian military base in Syria
In March, Euronews warned of the dangers of allowing Russia into Libya: “A weak and Kremlin-influenced Libya is a threat to NATO and European security. With the world's attention focused on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to expand his country's influence in Africa. He is now using Libya as a springboard to station Russian submarines in the central Mediterranean and nuclear weapons on Europe's southern flank.”
Defense News writes that Libya provides Russia with access to African countries such as Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, where Wagner mercenaries are involved in civil wars and rebellions. The Washington Institute for the Study of War noted two other dangers: Russian cruise missiles installed in Libya could hit any target in Western Europe. Libya already helps smugglers transport boatloads of illegal migrants to Europe, which could further strengthen Russia's weaponization of the outflow of migrants from Africa. Already Libya has been accused of evading EU sanctions and laundering Russian gas to sell to Europe. So it is no wonder that Moscow recently announced that it will open a consulate in Benghazi and build a naval base there. “A Russian Mediterranean base in Libya would threaten the southern flank of Europe and NATO,” the institute concluded.
Russia's threat to Europe in Libya and Syria
These developments are a further escalation in Russia's war against Europe and the Middle East. A White House spokesman recently stated that “keeping Russia out of the Mediterranean Sea was a key strategic objective,” but this has clearly failed. Russia seeks unhindered a new naval base in the Red Sea, in Sudan, where Russia is embroiled in another bloody civil war. The strategy is clear: a base there would give Russia permanent access to the Suez Canal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Peninsula.
The questions raised by these developments must be answered: Why did the West and Israel allow Russian military operations to take root in Syria? Why was the destruction of Russian military facilities in Syria left to Ukraine? Why did Israel not listen to Ukrainian warnings about impending terrorist attacks from Ukraine? Where are the United States and NATO in all this? It is already too late for the Syrians to reclaim their nation-state, but it is clear that Moscow's Syrian and Libyan ties must be dissolved immediately. And this time, the warnings must be heeded.
Reprinted with permission from the author, read the original here.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Kyiv Post.
