“There is one thing we should not forget: the US interventions in the [Persian] Gulf would have never happened if the Soviet Union had not broken up,” Hadrien Desuin wrote in Wednesday’s issue of Le Figaro.
With the apparent failure of the Western attempts to end the four-year old civil war in Syria, Russia has consistently offered its diplomatic services to resolve the conflict, he wrote, adding that the West was now less tolerable of the atrocities committed by Islamic State than it is of President Assad’s attempts to stay in power.
“With all this in mind, Russia’s position appears to be more fair and realistic,” Desuin noted.
“Putin and his generals now feel themselves strong enough to come forward and deploy their best technologies in the Middle East,” he added.