Reading reports of Russian warplanes reducing the Syrian city to rubble, Oliver Bullough is reminded of Vladimir Putin’s bombardment of the Chechen capital, Grozny, at the beginning of the century:
Putin knows now, as he knew [during the war in Chechnya], that he and his proxies can’t win on the ground, so they are trying to solve their problem from the air. Where infantry won’t go, he’s dropping explosives.
Putin is not alone in this, of course. Western leaders also try to solve complex issues without risking close contact. But Putin has an advantage over his rivals. There are almost no journalists, politicians, or activists in Russia pushing him to spare Aleppo’s civilians, just as there was never much sympathy in Russia for civilians trapped in Grozny while rockets were smashing the city. . . .
Those of us who visited the city afterward were stunned by the destruction. It had become acres of shattered buildings, scrunched factories, and shredded fences. Today some suggest—as Russia has—that Western states are just as bad. But they aren’t. They can’t be: any Western government that did what Putin did to Grozny, or is doing to Aleppo, would fall, and would deserve to. . . .
Although Putin need not worry about domestic opinion, he cares desperately about what the world thinks of him. . . . If he succeeds in imposing peace in Syria, even at the cost of leveling Aleppo, he will try to legitimize his victory. He will do that by giving it the outward trappings of a real, democratic peace process: of a Northern Ireland, or a South Africa. . . .
In the years after Putin started his Chechen war in 1999, he had Chechnya’s leaders killed and imposed peace via a local strongman. The savagery necessary to maintain order has since driven out at least one-third of the prewar Chechen population, with most of them seeking asylum in Europe. The exodus continues today. Chechnya still requires vast annual subsidies from Moscow, and its peace remains just one assassination away from chaos.
Read more on New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/opinion/putin-in-syria-chechnya-all-over-again.html