Russia’s Deadly Mideast Game
Putin uses “small, victorious wars to keep himself popular.”
Andrey Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, is seen lying on the floor after being shot by Mevlut Mert Altintas, right, in Ankara on Dec. 19.
Photographer: Yavuz Alatan/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
With its devastating show of force in Syria’s civil war, Russia has reasserted itself as a military power in the Middle East. It’s also put Russians in the region at mortal risk, as the Dec. 19 assassination of Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, proves.
Karlov is a casualty in the Kremlin’s quest for power and influence in the region. Karlov’s murder—by a gunman who screamed opposition to the siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo before he himself was killed—is likely to draw Ankara and Moscow closer because of shared security concerns over the spillover of the Syrian conflict.