INTERNATIONAL SECURITY amnesties were used by Muscovites to coerce Chechen commanders to stop fighting or change sides or otherwise face “extrajudicial killings or attacks on and abduction of relatives.” Occasional suggestions from various international actors about a ceasefire and negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in 2022-2023 only prove that the lessons of the recent past have not been well learned. In the absence of Russia being defeated and prosecuted for its crimes, and without the systematic dismantling of the Russian imperial mentality, Muscovites will inevitably invade again.
Syria Impunity for the crimes only encourages a state aggressor to intensify and spread its application of violence as part of its political strategy. After the government of Syria employed military force to suppress civil protests in multiple cities across the country in April 2011, international sanctions against the Syrian regime under Bashar alAssad surged. Nevertheless, over that year, Moscow sold to Damascus at least $1 billion worth of armed weapons, with the Moscow Times calling out “$4 billion in active armed contracts” with another “five major contracts impossible to verify” – that contrasts with $1.5 billion worth arms sold over the previous decade. Building on their rich experience in the Second Chechen War, Russian military advisers assisted Assad to fight rebel forces mercilessly, including the use of technologies for targeting, methods of silencing international reporters, and the tactics of slaughtering dissidents and obliterating towns. In 2012, Putin, rebuked claims that Russia was supporting the al-Assad regime in this way, stating that “Russia does not supply such arms which could be used in the civil conflict.” 42
Russia vetoed the first UN Security Council resolution in 2012 that called for all parties to stop violence and urge the Syrian Government for a peaceful and inclusive dialogue within own state. The RF has vetoed sixteen more UNSC resolutions on Syria since then. As noted by Deputy U.S. Representative to the United Nations Richard Mills, “Russia has sought to shield the Assad regime from accountability for its brutal human rights abuses, its chemical weapons use.” It was in Moscow’s geopolitical interests to do this, and there was neither the institutional mechanism in the UN nor political will on the side of its members to peacefully deter the Kremlin from providing its support to the Assad regime. Challenged in Syria, a liberal model of conflict management cracked under the violent force of coercive mediation and top-down peace enforcement. Over 2011-2013, opposition forces managed to execute basic governance over the territories they controlled in Syria, but Russia’s direct military intervention in 2015 hammered most of those into chaos. Russia did not intend to treat rebels as equals in negotiations nor find a genuine compromise, instead, it used bombardments and sieges of cities full of civilians to persuade fighters to surrender or leave the territory as it had previously done in Chechnya and currently in Ukraine. Russia developed local militias under direct control, such as the Tiger Force and the Liwa al-Quds, who it used to continue the violence while conducting talks; a tactic it had previously employed in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. “As Guarantor powers, Russia, Iran, and Turkey seek to achieve a reduction in violence through its constant use, and by demarcating what counts as legitimate and illegitimate violence as part of Syrian ‘peace’,” notes Samer Abboud.
As David Lewis observes, to achieve a political settlement, Moscow relied on violence, political exclusion and buying loyalties through its own network of official and unofficial humanitarian aid and religious organisations, using all its power in the UNSC to block UNled aid. In contrast to the inclusive format of the Geneva peace talks, the Moscow-led Astana process was built on geopolitical interests, and attempted to construct an alternative controllable opposition in Syria with whom the al-Assad government could strike a deal. The international community did even worse than nothing in response. In 2019, US President Trump ordered the withdrawal of the US forces, which had carried out anti-terrorist operations and protection of civilians in oppositioncontrolled areas in Syria. In the end, the Kremlin honed its model of conflict management abroad and started marketing its service as an international security provider as an alternative to legacy international institutions. The inadequacy of international law and enforcement created an opportunity for the Kremlin to deny direct involvement, while private military companies like Wagner did their criminal bidding on the ground. In 2018 in Deir-ez-Zour, Syria, at least two hundred Russian citizens perished in Wagner’s attack against the US and Syrian opposition forces, who the Kremlin denied were even there. Wagner mercenaries took over the oil and gas fields in Syria, with the Russian Ministry of Energy standing to benefit through a share in future revenues. The gravity and scale of war crimes perpetrated by the Wagner Group in Syria were highlighted in a case filed with the European Court of Human Rights in 2021 regarding the torture and beheading of a Syrian man, which Line of Defence
