Putin Has 'Played A Blinder' Over Syria

The idea that Vladimir Putin may prove to be a "force for good" or even to have shown strategic wisdom in the Middle East will be as pleasant for his critics in the West as swallowing a thumb tack.

But now may be the time the White House and Whitehall should be bracing to guzzle down the contents of their stationery drawers.

For now, it appears, Mr Putin has played a blinder.

His bombers have killed hundreds of civilians. Missiles have rained down on schools, hospitals, clinics, homes and farms with profligate abandon. Cluster bombs and unguided missiles have torn into Syria’s rebels while Russian Spetsnaz commandos have driven the Damascus army to victory on the ground.

Russia’s behaviour in Syria has drawn international condemnation from human rights groups.

It has drawn incredulity from rival powers.

American officials even called their Russian counterparts at the start of the Kremlin’s campaign to ask whether they had learned any lessons from the debacles of American interventions in the Middle East.

Then, out of the blue, the Russian president announced that the operation in Syria was going to end - that it had succeeded in its aims.

"Nobody knows what is in Putin's mind, but the point is he has no right to be in our country in the first place. Just go", said Salem Al Meslet, spokesman for the main rebel alliance, at the start of peace talks in Geneva.

Mr Putin may have appeared enigmatic. But it has been pretty obvious what has been in his mind.

He wanted to turn the tide of the Syrian war from the moment it threatened to overwhelm Bashar al Assad about five months ago. Tick.

He wanted to protect Russia’s warm water naval base at Tartus. Tick.

He wanted to signal to his allies in the "Stans" - the eastern nations of the former Soviet Republic which are being courted by China and the West while some are also threatened by demands for internal reform or jihadi movements – that he would stick by those who stuck by him. Tick.

He needed to divert attention from domestic economic turmoil. Tick.

He wanted to show the world that Russia has the sort of military equipment that America and her allies have monopolised and used in interventions around the world for two decades by firing off cruise missiles and deploying state-of-the-art air defences for Assad. Tick.

An added "bonus" has been the destabilisation of the European Union, with the movement of more than a million refugees fleeing the renewed fighting and his bombs.

And now he has signalled that his intent all along was peace.

By withdrawing his forces from Assad’s fight he’s telling the Syrian president that he must now accept that he, personally, cannot rely on indefinite Russian support - even if his regime can.

Mr Putin is telling Assad to talk. That is something no one else has achieved.