Why Putin Wants Syria
Journal: Middle East Quarterly
Year: 2016

Russia's military intervention in Syria that began on September 30, 2015, is its first major intrusion into the Levant since June 1772 when forces bombarded, stormed, and captured Beirut, fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria.1 Then as now, the Russians backed ruthless local client; then as now, they found themselves in a boiling cauldron of factional-ethnic strife, which they tried to simplify with cannonades and gunpowder.2But why? Why did President Vladimir Putin intervene in faraway country