Why Syria's Kurds can’t count on long-term commitment from Russia

It’s understandable that some Syrian Kurdish fighters worry that Washington will “dump” them once they are no longer useful, and that Russia is feeding their fear to play up its own position. But anyone harboring such worries about the United States should take an equally hard look at Moscow’s past conduct and likely future objectives.

Russia had a long czarist and Soviet engagement with the Kurds. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has long-standing experience with the Kurdish question, having served as Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations Security Council for 10 years, including during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath. Iraq’s Kurds have been the subject of high-profile international diplomacy since that time.

Moscow has demonstrated periodic support for an independent Kurdistan, even establishing the short-lived “Red Kurdistan” inside the Soviet Union and later a Kurdish republic in northern Iran. However, it can be easy to overlook Moscow’s rather limited commitment to the Kurds in detailed accounts of their interaction over hundreds of years. Russia has not yet demonstrated the sustained interest or determination required to deliver long-term results.

There are good reasons for this. While Russia’s attachment to the Kurds — whether in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere — has generally had both strategic (broad and enduring) and tactical (narrow and immediate) motives, Moscow has many competing aims. Strategically, a minority group distributed across multiple important regional states provides a useful lever in cooperating with some and balancing against others. For example, across hundreds of years, Moscow’s style of great-power politics has often put Turkey in the “balancing” category. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in recent years had been edging toward becoming an important Russian partner — at least until he decided he would rather shoot down a Russian jet in November.