RUSSIA has changed the game in the Middle East. It’s no longer about crushing Islamic State. It’s about reasserting Soviet-era authority and driving the Kurds as a knife into NATO’s soft underbelly.

Military analysts the world over watched with intrigue when Russia took its first — seemingly minor — steps to ‘punish’ Islamic State back in September.

Nobody believed it. Everyone assumed the move was to shore-up besieged Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.

They were right.

Many mocked the capabilities of the handful of strike fighters and supporting troops moved to Latakia on Syria’s northern coast.

How wrong they were.

SYRIA: Airstrikes Hit Islamic Factions in South Hama Province February 28 Local media activists in Hirbnafsah town, south Hama province, shared footage on February 28 described as showing a “Russian raid” on the town. A media activist, Hadi Abdullah, said that the “Russian” jets carried out six strikes on Hirbnafsah south Hama. Pro-government media group, Damascus Now, reported that “Russian jets” shelled a “Jabhat al-Nusra” location in Hirbnafsah in south Hama. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported on heavy clashes between the Syrian army and “Islamic factions” near the town. They reported military jets carried out more than eight strikes on Hirbnafsah. Storyful is unable to verify who carried out the strikes. Hirbnafsah has been under the control of Islamic factions, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, which are not covered by the recent ceasefire agreement. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, excluded the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra from any ceasefire agreements, SANA reported. Credit: Facebook/

The aircraft have been flying around the clock, delivering its eclectic mix of precision missiles and ‘dumb’ bombs where they hurt the most.

Islamic State? Not so much.

That could actually help the Syrian rebels who are also battling the black-flagged bandits at their backs.

Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin — desperate to maintain his image at home as an international strong man — has been blatantly bombing Assad back into power.

In doing so, Putin is exposing cracks in the anti-ISIS coalition through the growing plight of the Kurdish ethnic group which has so successfully been resisting Islamic State advances.

Amid this diplomatic turmoil, Putin appears to have the upper hand.

But not all is as it appears.

“There is a line of thought that he’s really overstretching himself internationally,” says Professor Martin Griffiths of the Flinders University School of History and International Relations.

“Russia is in deep doo doo. In other words, behind all this is a very, very damaged economy back home.”

FEET OF CLAY

What’s so important about the Kurds? The heroes of the siege of Kobane? The first force to successfully repel Islamic State?

Turkey sees its local Kurdish population as terrorist insurgents. To appease Ankara, the West must end its support for Syria’s Kurdish fighters in their struggle against Islamic State.

So where will the Kurds turning to get the support they need?

Damascus. Moscow.

By all appearances Putin needs simply sit back and watch as the US and Turkey drive the Kurdish people into his open arms.

This scenario makes the diplomatic vortex that is Syria immensely fragile: Turkey’s dislike of the Kurds risks dragging the West into further confrontation with Russia.

And Ankara’s not happy.

Russian and Syrian Government troops have in recent weeks been combining forces with Syrian Kurds.

This leaves the US — despite its shaky Syrian ceasefire agreement — looking weak.

Damascus accepts the ceasefire — except for combating “terrorists”

Ankara accepts the ceasefire — except for combating “terrorists”.

Putin appears to emerge from all this the winner.

But Professor Griffiths says it is a hollow victory.

“What he’s facing at home is a growing restlessness,” Professor Griffiths says.

Putin’s economy is in tatters after the collapse in world oil prices and the introduction of international sanctions following his ‘velvet’ invasion of Crimea and Ukraine.

“He’s popular, but at the same time he’s very repressive. So he’s trying to play the idea that Russia is still a great world power.”

ONE MAN’S FREEDOM FIGHTER, ANOTHER MAN’S TERRORIST

The Kurdish ethnic group is split between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan. They’re a minority in each. They yearn for a homeland of their own.

The Syrian Kurds were hailed as heroes for being the first to stall Islamic State’s seemingly unstoppable advance at the siege of their enclave Kobane. But this ragtag group of fighters — including the lauded all-woman sniper units of the Peshmerga — now appear to have been hung out to dry.

The minority Kurdish people within Turkey have long been labelled insurgents.

This is why it was not really all that odd for Ankara to have been bombing their Syrian enclaves at the same time as Washington’s aircraft were aiding them with air support against ISIS.

Turkey attempted to deny the Kurds a position at recent Syrian ceasefire talks on the basis they were “affiliated with terrorists”.

Heroine, martyr #YPJ commander Hebun Dêrik/Sinya will always be remembered and never forgotten. pic.twitter.com/lFYun81oyN — YPG Kobanê (@Kobane_YPG) February 4, 2015

Assad leapt on this as a justification for him to ignore Syria’s rebels, asserting: “Ceasefires occur between armies and states, but never between a state and terrorists.”

So where can this band of cultural outcasts now turn for support?

Moscow.

Last week, Syria’s largest Kurdish militia — the YPG — joined with Russians and Syrian Government forces to besiege the city of Azaz. This city has been a key supply route between Turkey and rebels in the regional capital Aleppo.

Turkey, as a result, has ramped-up its rhetoric — and attacks — against the Kurds.

Syrian rebels say Turkey has since allowed at least 2000 fighters to cross its borders with Syria in the past week to reinforce Aleppo against an assault by Russian and Syrian forces.

Assad’s government alleges Turkish troops are among the gunmen — and accuses Ankara of a direct provocation.

KNIGHT MOVES

Ankara is something of an oddity in the NATO alliance.

“It’s an outlier geographically, but also an outlier philosophically and religiously,” says Professor Griffiths. “It’s also been backtracking on core democratic values.”

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ordered cross-border strikes against Kurdish rebels just hours after the Ankara attack last week.

He then called on his allies to end their support for Syrian and Iraqi Kurds.

The leader of the main Syrian Kurd militia, Salih Muslim, quickly insisted his group had nothing to do with the Ankara attack and warned Turkey against taking any action on the ground.

It’s a unilateral idea Turkish government officials have begun to openly mull.

“We don’t want to fall into the same mistake in Syria as in Iraq,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan recently told local reporters. “If … Turkey was present in Iraq, the country would have never have fallen into its current situation.”

As Turk-Kurd relations collapse, NATO’s position gets more delicate.

Syrian Kurds say they are about to open a “representation office” in Moscow. Russian forces in Syria appear set to establish a new air base in the Kurd-controlled city of Qamishli.

In strengthening the Kurds, Putin is putting pressure along Turkey’s entire southern frontier — both in Syria and Iraq.

This could be aimed at compelling Ankara to act — and to test the NATO alliance through the resulting stand-off.

PUTIN IN POLE POSITION?

President Assad has now warned Turkey that any ground incursion into Syria will have “global repercussions”.

The Kurds, assisted by the US to repel Islamic State attacks, know they will receive no such support in resisting Ankara.

US Vice President Biden just last month made that very clear — asserting the PKK Kurdish faction was as great a threat to Turkey as the Islamic State itself.

The Kurds have been burnt by the US before, in various crises with Iraq and Iran. In their struggle for an independent homeland, they are now turning towards Moscow for help.

Turkey has long been a thorn in Russia’s side.

But mostly, Putin gets to put NATO under pressure. To damage its credibility.

And paint Washington as a hypocrite.

I don't know if Rehana is alive or dead, But for me she is a symbol of resistance against Islamic State. Bless her pic.twitter.com/RVwxHBYTyV — Issa (@issa_kobani) November 6, 2014

“Moscow wants to make Eastern Europe reconsider the value of working with NATO,” Professor Griffiths says. “It’s already abandoned Ukraine. What if Turkey too?”

But he says Putin is playing a very dangerous game in pushing NATO to the brink.

“At some point they just will stop tolerating this,” he says. “They’ve already been tolerating a lot.”

It’s a clash of wills.

“Whether the Russians, given their overstretched economy, are going to support Assad to the very end is uncertain,” he says. “In the short term, yes: But I can see Putin having to back down.”

But Putin must himself save face.

This could be achieved through a negotiated division of power in Syria, Professor Griffiths says, but never a capitulation to “terrorists”.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING ABOUT?

The missing element in this struggle for supremacy in Syria is Islamic State.

Has the torture, executions, beatings and oppression of the jihadists become a sideshow?

“ISIS want’s to divide and rule,” Professor Griffiths says. “They’re trying hard to bring Turkey into the conflict with the Kurds as much as they can.”

The power games between Moscow and the US is also playing into its narrative of morally bankrupt states and self-interested superpowers.

And the populations of Iraq and Syria already have enough cause for disillusionment.

Fertile ground for jihad.

But Professor Griffiths thinks the political game of brinkmanship will soon abate, and the world’s eye will swing back towards Islamic State.

Timelapse of the #Syrian Civil War & its spillover into #Iraq, from its beginning in March 2011 to mid-February 2015 pic.twitter.com/Bz96MPQuP2 — Warfare Worldwide (@WarfareWW) February 20, 2016

“I can see the US and NATO and getting worried about the Kurds and putting pressure on Turkey,” Professor Griffiths says. “Once the focus turns back to IS, the Kurds will again look more important and therefore they’re less likely to be sold down the river.”

The objective, after all, is attempting to establish a lasting peace.

“We are not going to get peace in this part of the world unless we start to seriously look at the idea that borders cannot be changed,” he says. “It’s becoming clear that those notional areas of Syria and Iraq make no political sense.”

The idea of allowing borders to be changed by force has been powerfully opposed by the post 1945 international order.

But it is already happening. In a very bloody way.

“This is the biggest failure of the US post 2003. An organised breakup of Iraq like Yugoslavia needs to happen here. Unless we recognise this and assist it in a peaceful way, the fighting will never end.”

@JamieSeidel