The anticipated Russian flotilla is now in the Mediterranean to carry out exercises:
The drills involve task forces from Russia’s Black Sea, Northern and Baltic fleets, strategic bombers, tactical aircraft, air defense units, paratroopers and naval infantry. ...
The exercises will continue until January 29 and involve over 60 drills, including anti-submarine warfare missions, missile and artillery firing practices.
The training may also include simulated beach landing and convoy escort missions as the task forces have four large landing ships and a variety of auxiliary vessels in their composition.
How long will the flotilla will remain after the drills? Once they sail home, the Russians lose either the capacity to intervene with a show of support to bolster the morale of Assad's loyalists as they retreat to a smaller territory, or to carry out a sea evacuation of Russian nationals in Syria if the whole thing collapses.
Indeed, given the potential consequences of a state collapse to provide room for jihadis; destabilize Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq; proliferate chemical weapons; and simply increase the already terrible casualties (north of 60,000 already) to really high levels; and the looming food shortage as stocks run out and access to more food erodes, it might be in our interests to organize an Assad retreat that preserves an Assad regime and the Syrian state while also allowing the rebels to win the war. Let's decentralize Syria:
We'd need to give the Alawites and their Christian allies a province they demographically dominate on the coast and mountains of western Syria; the Kurds would get a province in the northeast; and the Sunni Arabs would get the rest.
Damascus would be a federal enclave.
Power would be devolved to the provinces, including foreign affairs excepting some symbolic aspects reserved to the mostly nominal federal government. Assad could become president of the Alawite province and carry on as he has.
The Kurds and Sunni Arabs would get their own provinces. Perhaps the Sunni Arabs get multiple provinces based on existing provinces or groupings of them. The various rebel factions could be bought off with control of these provinces.
At the federal level, the rebels would dominate, with a rebel in the position of prime minister representing legal "Syria" at the UN. Powers might be restricted to the federal zone and certain legislative areas not reserved to the provinces, such as allocating oil revenue and tariff revenue to the various provinces.
Not that this would solve all problems and lead to peaceful harmony. But it might at least prevent the consequences I listed above from taking place.
Right now we just need to contain the damage. We'll still need to worry about new problems there, like defeating the jihadis and preventing factions from rearming to renew the war at a later date. But one problem at a time, eh?
UPDATE: The Russians pulled out a small number of people from Syria. As I noted earlier, they did it the easiest way by dispatching aircraft rather than staging a noisy military-led evacuation:
Russia's Emergencies Ministry said on Monday it was sending two planes to Lebanon on Tuesday to evacuate more than 100 citizens from Syria.
Three buses carrying Russian citizens crossed the border from Syria into Lebanon on Tuesday, Itar-Tass reported.
Some were expected to arrive in Russia late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. The Emergencies Ministry said it had no information about any further flights.
So why? Just some who wanted out and no significance?
A practice run to see if a less dramatic method works?
The beginning of a plan to reduce the number who might need a dramatic military rescue?
A warning to Assad to get a real plan for staying in power (whether in Syria or an Alawite-based mini-state) to safeguard Russian citizens?
There are a lot of Russians still in Syria:
Russian officials say there are tens of thousands of Russian citizens in Syria, many of them Russian women married to Syrians and their children.
Voice of Russia radio, citing Russian diplomats, said the total figure was more than 33,000, but officials at the Russian consulate in Damascus declined to comment.
Russia will have a far-larger-than-normal force within range of Syria for a while. If they are going to do something, they'd surely like to do it while they have the forces in place.
