The road to Saint Petersburg. Saint Poutine, help us

(BRUSSELS2) Near St Petersburg, during the EU-Russia Summit, Herman Van Rompuy took the opportunity to denounce a situation in Syria “ appalling and calling on the Syrian regime to immediately cease all forms of violence and give full support to the United Nations Monitoring Mission (MisNus)”.

Differing assessments

However, during discussions with the Russians, the President of the European Council could only acknowledge that the European Union and Russia had on the situation in Syria “ divergent assessments ". In fact, they only agree on one point: the Annan plan as a whole provides the best opportunity to break the cycle of violence in Syria, avoiding a civil war, and to find a lasting peaceful solution. ". A relatively weak point at the time when the consensus seems to be that the Annan plan has, for the moment, experienced a certain failure, not to say a certain failure. All the effort of the Europeans remains to try to convince the Russians to put pressure on their Syrian ally for this purpose. " We need to combine our efforts for this, and find common messages on which we agree. We need to work towards an immediate end to all forms of violence in Syria, and towards a process of political transition » explained H. Van Rompuy.

How to convince Russia ?

Comment: The problem today is to convince Russia, which for the moment is camped on an inflexible position in the Security Council, supports without qualms its Syrian ally, to evolve. But the notion of respect for human rights, of stopping violence is probably not really to strike the mind of the Russian president who did not skimp in Chechnya. Putin wishes to give back to his country all the luster and the weight on the international scene which he considers lost by years of weakening (in particular under the presidency of Yeltsin). And he seems rather to conceive the countries of the world according to a classic, realistic analysis of the division into zones of influence: Russian, American, Chinese, mixed... The NATO coup in Kosovo, then in Libya, will not be not repeated in Syria, which is one of its allies, which it places in its area of ​​influence, against the backdrop of the latent war between Shiites and Sunnis, where Russia has rather chosen the camp of the former (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah ) against the latter. We could thus believe ourselves back to the best moments of the Cold War. However, Europe is not devoid of arguments: the Russian president wants the liberalization of visas, prepares his entry into the World Trade Organization. He must retain a certain aura in the Arab camp. He aspires to a certain legitimacy. You still have to be ready for the coup. I'm not sure that a nice aubade in St Petersburg will be enough to change his mind...