Will Putin turn out to be the great peacemaker?

Russia’s bombing of Aleppo may have been akin to war crimes, said Le Monde (Paris), but we should nevertheless applaud its efforts to bring Syria’s warring parties together. The rebels have been gravely weakened by the city’s fall, but so too, politically, has Syria’s President Assad: his depleted forces could never have triumphed without Russia’s help. And now that Vladimir Putin holds the upper hand with his ally, he and Turkey’s President Erdogan are pushing for a peace deal; together with Iran, they sponsored two days of talks in Kazakhstan last week. The Turks persuaded the various rebel factions to attend, while Moscow practically forced the Syrian regime participants to sit at the
same table with them – if only for the opening ceremony. The West was hardly represented: the new Trump administration had been invited, but having yet to clarify its aims, it declined. The outcome was modest: the co-sponsors will set up a trilateral body to enforce the ceasefire. Yet even that is progress of a sort – more than any UN-brokered talks in Geneva have achieved. Russia is showing a new, flexible attitude, said Maxim A.

Suchkov in Al-Monitor (Washington DC). It dropped its opposition to participation by the more militant rebels, and is cooperating closely with Turkey: jets from both countries have hammered Daesh targets. It is also the first time it is showing anger at ceasefire violations by the Syrian regime, a sign Putin may be open to the idea of Assad standing down; doubtless one reason the rebels have been participating. But that’s enraged the Iranians, who have invested in keeping Assad in power, said Heshmat Alavi in Al Arabiya English (Dubai). The mullahs are alarmed at having to play second fiddle to Russia and Turkey, and terrified by the thought of a rapproche ment between Russia and Trump’s US, which could result in a deal “vastly” against their interests. The “harsh” reaction by Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to the revelation that the US had been invited shows he thinks Putin is “throwing Iran under the bus”.

The test of success will be whether the ceasefire holds, said Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A likely flashpoint is the Wadi Barada, a valley west of Damascus held by rebels, who have cut off the water supply to five million of the city’s people and who regard the Syrian regime’s efforts to dislodge them as a violation of the truce. If they’re pushed out of the valley, the ceasefire will be dead. But if it holds, the Kazakhstan talks will strengthen the prospect of a settlement when negotiations resume in Geneva this month, said Martin Jay in Daily Sabah (Istanbul). We know what must be done. Now that Turkey has dropped its obsession with toppling Assad, it needs to convince the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia to do likewise; to stop pouring money into a “black hole”, with arms supplies to the rebels. And the UN and EU must outline a humanitarian and restructuring programme to enable the rebels to “swallow the bitter pill of defeat”.