The United States was taken by surprise by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Monday order to declare victory and begin withdrawing Russian ground forces from Syria, according to a senior defense official.
“We did not see this coming,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss operations.
But the official also said there were signs that Russia’s military operations in Syria were not being conducted in a “sustainable” way.
“They were not rotating forces, they were not pulling planes out of service for maintenance, we wondered how long they could keep it up.”
Pentagon officials note that Russia will retain its naval base at Tartus, its airbase in Syria’s Latakia province.
“They had the port before, but Latakia gives them a brand new air base in the region,” noted the official, who said the improvements to the base five months ago, which included underground fuel tanks and runway extensions, indicated Moscow planned to keep the base long-term.
In Moscow, Putin said the mission in Syria had been accomplished, “I believe that the goal set out to the ministry of defense and the armed forces has in large part been fulfilled and that’s why I order the minister of defense as of tomorrow to start the pullout of the main part of our military grouping from the Syrian Arab Republic.”
It’s unclear if the pullout means an end to Russian airstrikes.
The Pentagon said as of last night Russian air attacks intensified against the Islamic State area in Palmyra, and Rasm al-‘Aboud.
The declaration of victory would seem to validate the Pentagon’s long-standing criticism that the Russian intervention in Syria was more about propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad, than fighting the Islamic State.
Assad is now in a much stronger position than before the Russian air campaign, while the Islamic State is nowhere close to being defeated.
Obama administration critics, such as Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., backed up this claim on Monday afternoon.
“The announcement that Russia will begin withdrawing some military forces from Syria signals Vladimir Putin’s belief that he has bombed and killed enough of the opponents of the murderous Assad regime to ensure its survival,” he said in a statement.
McCain complained that the U.S. stood by as Assad slaughtered innocents and said “there is no military solution” to the problems there, rather than face the notion that the military can play a role.
“Unfortunately, that is what Russia and its proxies have demonstrated in Syria,” he said. “They have changed the military facts on the ground and created the terms for a political settlement more favorable to their interests. This likely result is that the Syrian conflict will grind on, ISIL will grow stronger, and the refugees will keep coming. And as Russia turns its resource and attention elsewhere, I fear that a bloody spring is coming again to Ukraine.”
McCain has been saying for months that Putin is consistently outmaneuvering the U.S. in Syria.
Last month at the prestigious Munich Conference on Security Policy, McCain blasted the “cessation of hostilities” agreement hammered out between Moscow and Washington, as simply playing into Putin’s hands.
“It is no accident that Mr. Putin has agreed on a cessation of hostilities when he did. We have seen this movie before in Ukraine: Russia presses its advantage militarily, creates new facts on the ground, uses the denial and delivery of humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip, negotiates an agreement to lock in the spoils of war, and then chooses when to resume fighting. This is diplomacy in the service of military aggression,” McCain said.
