MOSCOW // There was no patriotic enthusiasm on Friday from Russians watching footage of their jets bombing targets in Syria, just a keen sense of the danger of getting entangled in a nasty conflict with no end in sight.
The wary mood was in stark contrast to sentiments over Ukraine, where most Russians felt a surge of national pride that their leader, Vladimir Putin, had taken control of Crimea, a region many of them believe is rightfully Russian.
Syria is viewed with more trepidation because it revives painful memories: of the Soviet Union’s long war in Afghanistan, and of the Kremlin’s battles against extremists in its own Caucasus region.
That conflict led to retaliatory bomb attacks on civilians in Moscow, and some people worry the Syria operation could also invite revenge attacks, perhaps from some of the hundreds of Russian militants now fighting alongside ISIL.
“We are scared about the repercussions,” Natalia, a retired 52-year-old, said at Lyubyanka metro station, one of the sites of twin suicide bombings in 2010 that killed 39 people.
“Everyone remembers what happened here, right here at this station. Only a fool would say he wasn’t scared,” she said. “It’s scary what’s happening in Syria.”
For many Russians, sending military jets into Syria makes sense. Like other people around the world, they fear the spread of ISIL, and see that Western attempts to crush the group have not made much progress.
They also give their president the benefit of the doubt. “Putin knows what he is doing and it is the right thing,” said Vladimir, a pensioner in Moscow.
Pollster Levada Centre conducted a survey on attitudes to Syria this month, before Moscow announced the start of military operations but after a Russian military build-up had begun.
In the survey, 39 per cent of respondents said they approved the Kremlin’s stance on Syria to some extent, while 33 per cent said they were not interested.
Yet even those who back the intervention base their support on the assumption that it will be short, sharp and limited in scale, unlike Russia’s Afghanistan embroilment that dragged on for 10 years.
Valery Yuriev, served in Afghanistan between 1983 and 1985 as commander of a reconnaissance unit.
“It was a mistake in Afghanistan that we sent the infantry there. This resulted in losses of our soldiers and officers, stirred up an outcry among Soviet citizens and damaged the economy. There may be losses in Syria but they wouldn’t be as massive,” he said.
“It’s not in the interests of our state to get stuck (in Syria), like we did in Afghanistan, for 10 years.”
He said his estimate was that the Russian military was planning for an operation that would last two months. “But, unfortunately, theoretical forecasts don’t always coincide with reality, so it’s hard to predict.”
Russia’s military, for now at least, has the technical capacity to conduct operations in Syria and Ukraine at the same time without being overstretched. Forces committed to Ukraine are mostly infantry, while the deployment in Syria involves air and naval units.
Operations in Syria will make only a small dent in the country’s total defence and national security budget, which has risen under Putin to around 30 per cent of total spending.
But service personnel are unenthusiastic about being deployed to Syria, according to Sergei Krivenko, a human-rights activist who campaigns for the rights of soldiers.
Citing reports from the soldiers’ relatives, he said he knew of some troops who complained when they heard they were being deployed to Syria.
“The military are never enthusiastic about war because it’s a threat to their lives and health,” Mr Krivenko said. “Some people refuse to go.”
In Russia’s mainly Muslim Chechnya region, residents shuddered at the thought of Russian jets dropping bombs in Syria because it reminded them of their own experience.
Russia’s air force bombed parts of Chechnya to put down two rebellions by separatists.
“As people who have been through that hell, we know that it’s not possible to escape without civilian casualties in a war like that,” said Aslanbek, a 64-year-old resident of Chechnya.
“There aren’t just Islamic State fighters in Syria but ordinary people too who are unable to escape the war zone, and they will suffer as a result of these harsh measures.”
“As a person who has experienced this first hand, and also as a Muslim, I really feel for these unfortunate people.”
* Reuters
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