A day after the Kremlin's pointman on
Syria, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, all but conceded the end is nigh for
President Bashar al-Assad, Russia's Foreign Ministry licked his assessment by
insisting Moscow's position on Syria has not changed and never will.
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| Bogdanov (top) and Lukashevich |
The rollback came a day after Bogdanov said
Assad’s regime was losing control of Syria and might be defeated by opposition
forces.
“We
must look squarely at the facts, and the trend now suggests that the regime and
the government in Syria are losing control over more and more territory.
Sadly, we cannot rule out a victory by the Syrian opposition,” Bogdanov
yesterday told Russia’s Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group.
His
remarks were widely quoted by the Russian media, including the Interfax news
service, RIA Novosti, RT (Russia Today), Itar-TASS and Voice of Russia.
Russia, Bogdanov said,
is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Syria.
"We have
mobilization plans and are clarifying where our citizens are located," he
said.
It was the first time
an official at Bogdanov’s level had announced plans for an evacuation, a sign
Russia no longer held out hope Assad’s regime could prevail. He said Russia had
a plan to withdraw its personnel from its embassy in Damascus if necessary.
Bogdanov offered a dark
view of how the conflict would unfold from this point, saying it took two years
for the rebels to control 60 percent of Syria's territory, and they will
control it all in a year and a half.
“If up until now 40,000
people have died, then from this point forward the fighting will become even
more intense, and you will lose tens if not hundreds of thousands of people,”
he said. “If you accept this price to remove the president, what can we do? We
of course consider this totally unacceptable.”
The U.S. later on
Thursday commended Russia for "waking up to the reality" by
acknowledging the Syrian regime's impending fall.
“I think we want to commend the
Russian government for finally waking up to the reality and acknowledging that
the regime’s days are numbered,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland
told reporters, adding: “I think the question now is: Will the Russian
Government join those of us in the international community who are working with
the opposition to try to have a smooth democratic transition here, to take the
blueprint that we all agreed on in Geneva and form a transitional government
and have a transition that is as smooth, as democratic, as protective of the
patrimony of the Syrian people, if you will, as possible?”
Moscow’s negative
answer came within hours, when the Russian Foreign Ministry insisted in a
statement Friday that Bogdanov only was referring to the claims of the
"Syrian opposition and its foreign sponsors forecasting their quick
victory over the regime in Damascus."
Moscow sees no
alternative to a political solution to the Syrian conflict in keeping with the
Action Group for Syria communiqué, which was approved at a ministerial meeting
in Geneva in June, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich
said.
"Since the Russian
and foreign media are awash with remarks made by the Russian president's envoy
for the Middle East and deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, regarding
the situation in Syria, I would like to note that he has not made any
statements or given special interviews to journalists in the past few
days," Lukashevich said in the statement posted on the ministry's website
today.
“The Russian Public
Chamber's debate on Dec. 13 addressed problems facing the Middle East and North
Africa, including the Syrian crisis. The participants in the meeting quoted
well-known statements made by representatives of the irreconcilable Syrian
opposition and its foreign sponsors forecasting their quick victory over the regime
in Damascus," he said.
"In this context,
Bogdanov once again reaffirmed Russia's uncompromising view on the absence of
any alternative to a political settlement in Syria on the basis of the
principles of the Action Group's final communiqué, which was approved by
consensus at the ministerial meeting in Geneva on June 30 this year,"
Lukashevich said.
Voice
of Russia also quotes him as saying reports by the U.S. State
Department that Russia was changing its position on Syria were “erroneous.”
Lukashevich reiterated Russia
had never changed and had no intention of changing its position on Syria.
