It took a telephone call from United States President Joseph Biden on July 9 afternoon to convince President Vladimir Putin to abandon his “principled” stance on upholding Syria’s sovereignty and to grant consent to keeping the corridor for delivering humanitarian aid to the rebel-controlled Idlib province open. Until then, tense talks at the United Nations Security Council appeared to hit a wall: Russia refused to extend the compromise reached a year prior, which had authorized the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey. But after the Putin-Biden phone call, Moscow suddenly lifted its firmly formulated objections at the last minute, without any conditions (Izvestia, July 9). This uncharacteristic flexibility was, in fact, perfectly pragmatic within the regional context of the deepening humanitarian disaster in the war-ravaged and despotically ruled Syria. It should not, however, be seen as a shift in Russia’s external behavior toward a more stable and predictable pattern, as the Biden administration would like (Carnegie.ru, July 8).
OP-ED
Pavel Baev: Putin’s Syrian compromise amidst hostile Russian behavior
This picture taken on Dec. 18, 2020, shows an aerial view of partially destroyed abandoned buildings in the Arbaeen Mountain area, south of the town of Ariha in Syria's rebel-held northwestern Idlib province, which were previously aerially bombarded by the Syrian government and its allies.
