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Source: http://world.time.com/2013/06/10/how-standing-tough-on-syria-helps-putin-at-home-2/
How Standing Tough on Syria Helps Putin at Home
(Time) Simon Shuster - Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have become the most powerful man in the world. Since the start of May, a parade of political giants have flown to Russia to reason with him on the issue of Syria and its civil war. All of them have failed to change his mind, or even his tone. Russia's state television channels have meanwhile cast Syria as the victim of a bullying Uncle Sam. On Sunday, June 2, Russia's leading news program broadcast a 12-minute segment about American meddling in Syria. It argued that Washington has formed an alliance with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in order to "spread chaos" across the Muslim world and then to Russia and China. Never has the leading national news, whose programming is tightly managed by the Kremlin, directly accused Washington of partnering with terrorists in order to conquer the world. Such exchanges play well for Putin at home. They help cast Russia as a bulwark against the conniving West, and that resonates with an electorate bred on the imagery of the Cold War. Russian firms have billions of dollars in contracts with the Syrian government, including deals to sell arms, drill oil and build infrastructure. Any outside intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state tends to infuriate Putin, who does not want to become the target of such an intervention himself. And on the geopolitical chessboard, the only military base Russia has left outside the former Soviet Union is in the Syrian port of Tartus, a crumbling toehold on the Mediterranean Sea that Moscow is keen to protect.