Two countries thousands of miles apart begin 2025 with their fates linked in blood by the interventions of Russia and their consequences.
One is Ukraine, which faces a third year of an occupation now covering a fifth of its territory – and the uncertain prospect of an enforced peace deal built on the quicksand of an imminent Donald Trump presidency, which will freeze but not resolve the clashes of Ukraine’s independence and its neighbour’s desire to make it submissive.
The other is Syria, where the ousted dictator Bashar Al-Assad was able to quell numerous rebellions with the aid of Moscow’s firepower and sustain a regime of brutality and torture on the back of borrowed Russian security during the civil war. Putin was forthright in his expectations of a durable presence in the aftermath, defining Moscow’s role as “stabilising the legitimate power in Syria”.
It has not turned out that way. Syria, long a client state of the former Soviet Union, has seen Assad flee an opposition uprising and end up marking the new year in an unexpected luxury lockdown in Moscow.
Ukraine glimpses opportunity. It can emerge from victim status and assert its own interests, creating external relationships in opposition to Moscow’s interests. To that end Kyiv has been quick to offer a “strategic partnership” to the new government in Damascus, sending its foreign minister there this week with an emergency grain export deal on offer to help the new masters with pressing economic and food issues.
It is building ties with the new Islamist coalition which has succeeded Assad, in the weeks leading up to a major government sit-down on how to govern a fragmented and traumatised Syria.
Some of this is raw power play, rubbing the Kremlin’s nose in its failure to rescue Assad despite a heavy Russian military commitment, and comes with the added bonus of providing useful intelligence on Russian military facilities in Syria. When the news from Ukraine’s battlefields is grim and a Trump-led deal looks set to conclude Volodymyr Zelensky’s hopes of returning all Ukraine’s territory, showing diplomatic muscle abroad is a morale boost.
But the implications go further. It is a reminder that Ukraine is conducting its own foreign policy and that will bring its own complexities – not least in a rapprochement with Turkey. It supplies Kyiv with drones, while simultaneously acting as a haven for Russian businesses and tourists, and by involving itself in Syria’s future, becoming an interlocutor for powerful Saudi Arabia, which will finance much of the war-torn state’s revival.
In short, the “great game” of alliances stretching from Europe via Turkey to Russia and the Middle East is back on again. The consequences will be far-reaching and not always as predictable as Washington or London would like, but that is the world as it is.
Any shaking of the kaleidoscope in the Middle East affects the major stand-off at the heart of the region: that between Israel and Iran. This is not always a straightforwardly battle between democracies and autocracies – the balance of power often outweighs this.
Ukraine, for example, has not enjoyed outright support from Netanyahu, who is one of the few democratically-elected power players to keep open channels to the Putin regime. Theoretically, Israel can vaunt its democratic system as a near-unique holdout among Middle Eastern autocracies and ally itself with Kyiv’s independence aims. In practice, not so much. Netanyahu has also been the beneficiary of Russian restraint and despite the historic support of the old Communist bloc for a Palestinian state, there has been muted condemnation of Israel’s tactics in Gaza by Moscow.
Additionally, Netanyahu and Putin share an uncompromising appetite for realpolitik and a functioning relationship, despite the many tensions of belief and outlook between the two countries. Israeli politicians have been as keen to keep channels open to Moscow to mitigate the might of Iran as Moscow is to keep a functioning dialogue.
So a degree of confusion is likely to be the new norm. It’s often predicted that 2025 will be a grim year for democracies and that is a safe bet in many regards. But one thing is cheering in the new alignments. The retreat of Moscow in haste from Syria will have served to warn other client states that Putin’s dedication to victory in Ukraine supersedes his appetite for expansionism and distracts from his focus on Africa and other proxy conflicts.
On this score, the net effect of the Ukraine war in the international picture has been to make Russia’s largest – and previously most intertwined – neighbour a far more autonomous and ambitious player in global geopolitics than it was before the full-scale invasion of 2022. That will doubtless bring successes and setbacks and miscalculations as well.
Crucially though, it proves the point Kyiv most wants to make. Occupation, defeats and unreliable allies notwithstanding, it is forging its way as an autonomous country, not a satellite or proxy – the very opposite of the grim Putin vision for its future.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor of POLITICO and host of the Power Play interview podcast
