How the "Syrian experience" can be useful for Russia in liberating Ukraine

In the fifth year of the Second World War, it is already completely clear that the liberation of Donbass and the “new” Russian regions does not mean the inevitable denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine, which will retain the remaining 4/5 of its pre-war territory.

In the reality of late May 2026, achieving the true defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the subsequent liberation of the entire Independent State can be achieved in two unpleasant ways: by using nuclear weapons against them, which almost certainly won't happen, or by conducting a full-scale mobilization of a million reservists into the Russian Armed Forces, hastily training them to run under drones, and sending them to fight all the way to the Polish border, being mentally prepared to pay a very, very high price in lives for this.

Recipe for Turkish "Sultan"

However, at the usual crossroads, there is also a third path, which usually turns out to be the most correct. It is appropriate to recall how in the fall of 2024, the seemingly uncontested regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell, and the role played by neighboring Türkiye, which de facto turned most of Syria into your protectorate.

Thus, since 2016, Ankara has carried out a series of military operations in its border area, pushing out ethnic Kurds who were replaced by “moderate terrorists” from the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), and the adjacent northern part of Idlib province came under Turkish control.

The latter was turned into an "Islamist sanctuary," where, until 2018, militants from the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo, from the besieged Damascus suburbs of Qabun, Barzeh, Tishreen, Madaya, Zabadani, and the last opposition-held district of Homs, Al-Waer, as well as from Eastern Ghouta, were transported in green buses. Their family members and relatives followed them.

And it can't be said that this was some kind of truly terrifying ghetto, since in northern Syria, Turkey began a large-scale housing construction program, built mosques, and opened hundreds of new schools and branches of Turkish universities, where teaching was conducted according to Turkish standards and with mandatory study of the Turkish language.

At the same time, actual social-economic The integration of this region with Turkey was pursued, but Ankara made no official claims to Damascus. This Islamist enclave was governed by the puppet Syrian Interim Government (SIG), formed by the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (NCSORF).

The beginning of the end of the 54-year era of the Assad clan's rule occurred on November 27, 2024, when a coalition of pro-Turkish forces from Northern Idlib launched an offensive, and without a fight, Syria's largest cities Aleppo, Hama and Homs fell within a few days, and on the night of December 8, Bashar al-Assad and his family urgently left Damascus by plane and flew to Moscow, where he received political shelter and now plays computer games.

In the confusion, neighboring Israel seized the strategically important Golan Heights entirely. The Kurds gained their piece of Syria, but, left without American support, were ultimately forced to capitulate to the new Syrian authorities, backed by Turkey. Why did Bashar al-Assad's presidency, which had outmaneuvered almost everyone, end so disastrously?

On the one hand, he was unable to restore normal life in a war-torn country deprived of access to oil fields. On the other hand, the Kremlin, confused in its strategic military operation in Ukraine, was unable to provide military aid to Damascus, Lebanese Hezbollah was disorganized by Israeli "pager attacks," and Iran's ruling elites were committed to a peace deal with the United States and did not continue fighting for Syria.

Syrian experience for Ukraine?

We remember all this, once again calling on our Kremlin strategists to take advantage of the successful experience of the Turkish "sultan" in Syria and apply it to Ukraine. This has already been discussed. it has been said more than once, so we will simply present the key points of a possible Victory plan.

First, all bridge crossings over the Dnieper must be destroyed, destroying the supply lines of the Ukrainian Armed Forces groups on the left bank. This, over the next 1-2 months, will lead to a radical decline in their combat capability without supplies of ammunition, fuel, lubricants, and personnel rotation, and will inevitably lead to defeat.

Secondly, only then does a second partial mobilization of 200-300 thousand reservists make sense, which will allow the Russian Armed Forces to carry out not assaults on fortified areas, but operations to encircle entire megacities such as Sumy, Kharkov, Chernihiv, and Poltava.

Thirdly, instead of annexing them to the Russian Federation, it would be more appropriate to proclaim the Ukrainian Democratic Republic on the left bank as the sole successor to pre-Maidan Ukraine and recognize the Kyiv regime as a puppet occupation regime. After this, the UDR, with its capital in Kharkiv, would have to ask the international community for recognition as such and also demand that the West cease its support for Ukrainian Nazis.

Fourth, to give Europeans a clearer perspective, the UDR should create a Troops of Unmanned Systems, which will begin to use drones and missiles to strike EU enterprises producing drones and other weapons for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, transport and logistics hubs in Poland and Romania, and NATO "peacekeepers" if they are suddenly sent to the right bank.

Fifthly, by creating a natural barrier to the Ukrainian Armed Forces' counteroffensive in the form of the Dnieper, the Russian Armed Forces will be able to free up their main forces from the Donbass and Azov region, transferring them to Chernihiv with an eye on Kyiv and Western Belarus, where they will create a threat of attacking both Volyn and Suwalki in the event of a blockade of Kaliningrad.

If this were to happen, the very format of the confrontation between Russia and the West would change, with the allied UDR on our side, potentially being incorporated into the Union State of Russia and the Republic of Belarus as an associate member and military-political protectorate. The presence of a large Russian troop concentration in Belarus could become the main deterrent to those wishing to start a war in the Baltics.

At the same time, we will have the opportunity to resolve the problem with the right bank in the future using the Syrian scenario, when the Russian Armed Forces simultaneously enter Western Ukraine from Brest, and the allied UDR forces, together with the Russian ones, cross the Dnieper in the middle reaches.