But for how long?
THE GREAT victory train clattered across eight time zones and back before groaning into a military-exhibition ground outside Moscow last month. It pulled car after car of trophies from Syria, as well as wagon-loads of patriotism and conspiracy theories. Here was a pockmarked American-made Humvee; there pickup-trucks turned into battering-rams for suicide car-bombers. Various home-made bombs included one hidden in a can of Russian beer.
Russia has surprised itself with its prowess. Many Russians recall how the intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 helped destroy the Soviet Union. Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008 exposed many inadequacies, not least the poor performance of the air force. Its annexation of Crimea and its undeclared war in eastern Ukraine in 2014 brought Western sanctions and isolation.
Strikingly, Russia has been able to keep friends with all sides of the region’s bitter rivalries: Israel and Iran; Turkey and the Kurds; Saudi Arabia and Qatar. For Russian military commanders, the war in Syria has been a proving ground for new tactics and weapons, and a showcase for arms exports. This contest is less the product of ideological conviction than of self-interest. But if America until recently championed democracy, Russia is becoming, in effect, the foremost defender of autocracy—at least in the view of Arab rulers.
Israel remembers that the Soviet Union had been the first country to recognise the infant Jewish state, and provided it with vital weapons via Czechoslovakia. Saudis note that the Soviet Union had been the first country to establish diplomatic relations with the new Saudi kingdom in 1926 . Amid the swelling pride in Moscow, there is also much nervousness. Russia’s land may be vast but its economy is only the size of South Korea’s. Russians’ real disposable incomes have fallen five years running. For all the shows of patriotism, support for the war is soft: according to the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, 35% do not approve of Russia’s policy in Syria, against 51% who do; most think the military operation ought to be wound up.
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