George W Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” 2003 victory speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is memorable for having aged extremely badly, given how Iraq subsequently descended into a full-on hellish sectarian war, with US troops fighting on for eight more years. So you might think Vladimir Putin would have left no hostages to fortune where that particular infamous address from a podium was concerned.

Not so. In a surprise visit to Russia’s Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia Province, northwestern Syria, in December 2017, the Russian president told the assembled airmen and soldiers that it was indeed mission accomplished when it came to Moscow’s military intervention on behalf of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in the multi-sided Syrian conflict.

So the weekend fall of Assad—whom Moscow, militarily tied up in Ukraine, hardly lifted a finger to help in the face of the lightning offensive that toppled him, though it has at least provided him with asylum in Russia—is egg on the face for Putin and a serious blow for Russia’s prestige.

In shoring up Assad nearly a decade ago, the Kremlin set out to re-assert itself as a global power. Another attraction of the military adventure was securing a foot in the eastern Mediterranean region. In return for saving Assad’s skin, Russia was awarded 49-year leases on the air base in Hmeimim and a naval base in Tartus. Whether Russia will now be forced to beat a retreat from those bases is one of the more intriguing questions thrown up by the hasty exit of Assad.

Should the bases be exposed to attacks from some of the less-than-Russia-friendly militia groups now in the ascendancy in their vicinity, perhaps Putin can cut a deal with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan—who holds plenty of sway with jihadists and other armed groups across northern Syria—for some protection. Not what he had in mind all those years ago addressing Russian servicemen at Hmeimim. Either way, it is pretty much mission demolished.

George W Bush in 2003: Mission accomplished (apart from the eight years of hell to come). (Credit: file photo).