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Russia Has Pride, Contracts at Stake in Syria
(Washington Post) Will Englund - Russia's unwillingness to endorse a UN resolution calling for the ouster of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad arises from domestic, international, commercial and military calculations. But what appears to be driving the stiff resistance to Western and Arab efforts to remove Assad has more to do with perceptions of Russian prestige. Russian officials contend that NATO misused the UN resolution they had supported on Libya to pursue a much broader air war than was envisioned, and they are apparently wary of the same thing happening now in Syria. "What's going on in the Syrian situation is some kind of revenge," said Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst and deputy editor of the online publication Yezhednevny Zhurnal.