Since February 24, 2022, all eyes have been fixed on the war in Ukraine, but the impression of "as if I've seen this before" between Ukraine and Syria awakens the bitter memories of most of the Syrian opposition, as they watch the indiscriminate bombing carried out by the Russian army today as if it is the same who wreaked havoc in their country.

With this introduction, the Swiss newspaper “Le Temps” opened an article in which Edith Bouvier summarized a documentary she is directing, an attempt to review the cooperation between the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) and the Ukrainians, when the White Helmets decided to send advice to their counterparts, where a man says Firefighter Munir Mustafa "Our duty as humans is to offer our experience with the Russians and their methods of waging war. The Russian bombing continues here today. We have a common enemy with the Ukrainians, which is Russia."


A tragedy that could have been avoided

In September 2013, after the regime in Damascus used chemical weapons several times against its people, former US President Barack Obama retracted his threats of revenge, and entrusted the management of the file to the Russians - as the writer sees - so that the red line drawn by Washington turned into a green light for the Russian president. Vladimir Putin, and then the Syrian opposition realized that hope for greater international participation was over.

Russian propaganda claimed that Moscow was interfering in Syria to fight terrorism, but the reality was otherwise, as they intervened in areas populated by civilians and free of "jihadists," says political science researcher Salam al-Kawakibi, who watched his city of Aleppo being bombed without being able to do anything, explaining “I had the opportunity to meet with a Russian official very close to the file and I asked him: How far are the Russians going? He looked at me with sad eyes and said: As for Aleppo, this is the solution: Grozny. Indeed, they did in Aleppo exactly what they did in Grozny, and what they did after that in Mariupol And what they'll do next, maybe in other cities in Ukraine."

The writer recalled moments from the negotiations between the Russians and the Syrian opposition to get out of Aleppo, and how I understood them that they had to get out as you wanted or consider them terrorists, and how Russian planes bombed the convoys of the displaced and killed dozens of civilians, for the international community to criticize the attack without imposing any sanctions on Moscow.


worst strategy

After Aleppo - as the writer says - the same siege strategy was used in many cities in Syria such as Homs, Ghouta and Daraa, where Russia uses the cities of Syria as a military training ground for real targets, even Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu boasted about this on the eve of the intervention in Ukraine.

The writer mentioned that since 2015, Russian planes have carried out 90,000 raids in Syria, and 98% of the Russian pilots came for training in the country - as the writer says - and today Putin appoints General Sergei Sorovikin as commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine after he was the commander of the southern region in Syria. He replaces General Alexander Dvornikov, nicknamed "The Butcher of Damascus", who carried out a policy of terror against the civilian population of Syria.

General Sorovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon", was famous for his ability to respond unconventionally and quickly, and according to the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch, he is implicated in Syria in several attacks on residential areas, chemical bombardment and strikes on hospitals, and his arrival in Ukraine coincided with With Putin declaring indiscriminate and large-scale bombing, it seems to herald the worst.


West Awakening

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Western leaders have doubled down on their expressions of support for the Ukrainian people, regularly dispatching arms and military equipment shipments, and imposing sanctions on Moscow, a response that Syrians welcome with a hint of bitterness, says the writer. Or a quarter of what the Ukrainians got, we would have reversed the situation, and we could have created no-fly zones where civilians could live in peace.

Aladdin Ayoub, a member of the Free Syrian Army since its inception, recalls the arrival of a few shipments of ammunition provided by the Americans at that time, saying, “They gave us barely enough, and asked us to take pictures of all the cartridges being fired and the targets targeted, and then that supply quickly dried up. And they left us alone."

In 2017, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad granted Putin control of two military bases in western Syria, an air base near Latakia and a port in Tartus. The bases are a strategic location that allows Russia to project its power in southern Europe and on the southern side of NATO."

Currently, Moscow uses these bases as a tool to show strength to send its men to Libya or south in Africa, and thus Putin believed that he could expand his country’s sphere of influence without risk, and encouraged by his successes in Syria, he underestimated the international response when launching his military operation in Ukraine and overestimated the strength of his army.