If Putin loses his Tartus base, he may need a ceasefire in Ukraine

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Posted on 12/08/2024 6:43:46 AM PST by Timber Rattler

On November 27, a powerful force led by Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an offensive in northern Syria. Taking advantage of the dysfunctional Assad regime forces – the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) – and Russia’s preoccupation with its grinding war in Ukraine, HTS and its Turkish-supported allies advanced to the south – and swiftly liberated the city of Aleppo from Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad, his SAA and his Russian backers.

(snip)

The Russians know Tartus is in trouble. On December 3, commercial satellite imagery revealed that every major Russian warship known to operate from Tartus – three missile frigates, a diesel-electric attack submarine and two lightly-armed support ships – had unmoored from the port’s three large piers and sailed into the Med.

It’s possible the war in Ukraine is about to cost the Russian navy an entire ocean and a lot of influence. The Soviet Union, and later Russia, maintained a presence at Tartus since the 1970s, but it was mostly a token presence in the two decades between the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the commencement of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

(snip)

All that is to say, losing Tartus would be catastrophic for Russian power projection in Southern Europe and North Africa. Realistically, the only way for the Kremlin to replace the vital shore infrastructure in Tartus is to regain access to the Med via the Bosporus.

But there’s almost no prospect of that happening while the war in Ukraine still rages. Russian president Vladimir Putin may soon face an unhappy choice: keep fighting in Ukraine but lose influence in the Mediterranean region; or sue for peace in Ukraine and open up access from the Black Sea to the Med.

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...

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To: Timber Rattler

2 posted on 12/08/2024 6:51:11 AM PST by caww (O death, when you seized my Lord, you lost your grip on me......)

To: Timber Rattler

3 posted on 12/08/2024 6:53:11 AM PST by Sirius Lee (Gosh, that's swell!)

To: Timber Rattler

4 posted on 12/08/2024 7:09:55 AM PST by rrrod (6)

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