Putin withdrawing from Syria

[The Comrade]

https://www.rt.com/news/335554-putin-or ... ithdrawal/

this is unexpected and despite his claims that their goals are accomplished i'm calling bullshit. they were carrying out airstrikes and raids up until a few days ago at the very least. you don't just start pulling your military out at the drop of a hat like that. something else is going on and i suspect it has to do with chechnya. the head of chechnya, ramzan kadyrov, recently gave a surprise speech saying he was resigning. kadyrov is the appointed salafist dictator of chechnya that putin put in place after the second chechen war. he's basically the only thing holding chechnya together and preventing a third chechen war.

[Indy]

Could it be financial as well?

[John Galt]

russia is stretched a little thin http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-tro ... 34647.html

chechnya could definitely be part of it but with oil prices low (although it was 1.99 for gas the other day, the f**k is this expensive shit), sanctions, military presence in georgia and ukraine and syria... i just dont think they have the money to support the manpower they need (ha, a russian manpower problem)

how absolutely demoralizing it would be and embarrassing if the world found out that Russia couldn't support a little bit of action beyond its borders for more than 6 months. even France is better than that, and this is Russia, who was once described, only a few decades ago, as the only other world Superpower.

[The Comrade]

well they're cutting the military budget either for this year or next so they've already acknowledged they can't support it.

[Saz]

haha what losers those russians are. They can only afford 6 months of useless middle eastern wars, we could afford 10 years! Suckers!

[The Comrade]

i know you're being flippant but yeah they are losers for that.

[Kane]

Putin's cutting his losses after realizing he can't force Assad out himself. With Assad there indefinitely and the rest of the world not budging until he's deposed Russia is mired in protecting its interests there for the long term. It was noted that this would be over a period of time and that Russia would maintain both the airbase and the port in Syria but I think they're also reacting to developments at home.

[John Galt]

[spacemonkey]

Everyone including us needs to leave that part of the world alone and let them kill each other as they see fit.

[fstarcstar]

I think Putin doesn't care enough to be there, because of the military routes he is restricted to I think it's too much of a pain to be in Syria.

He also probably doesn't want to be stuck there for a long time. It's hard to tell if there is public support or not because the media is obviously heavily controlled. Oil prices are probably hurting them more than expected.

There never really was any goals to achieve in the first place assuming the goals were to bomb US backed rebels and then leave to keep Assad in power.