US News and World Report quotes Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Resident Senior Fellow Anders Aslund on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine amongst the current conflict in Syria:
“This is a diversionary maneuver,” says Anders Aslund, a former Swedish diplomat to Geneva, Poland and Moscow, now with the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. “Russians like small and victorious wars, as Putin has done repeatedly. The problem with the war in Donbass is it is neither small nor victorious, and it is just a stalemate. One way of breaking the stalemate is to do something else.
“By bombing Syria, Russia forces itself to be discussed by the Western powers,” Aslund says. “It matters to Putin a lot that he looks like a star internationally.”
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Russia also may not have any particular aim in supporting a surge in rebel violence in Ukraine, Aslund adds, but rather sees it as the latest continuation of its attempts to destabilize the central government in Kiev and undercut upcoming elections in the new year. Moscow hopes the leadership of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will fail, and a more friendly regime will come into power.