Putin has 2 strategies: one is about PR, which is not a strategy in the good old sense, and the other is the US strategy

Putin today declared that Russia might not need to keep its military base in Syria after all. In this one of the unstated consequences, if not "purposes," of the belated Russian intervention might have been revealed.

Importantly, as both Kerry and Biden recently stressed, Putin made and repeated some very clear and far reaching "commitments" personally to Obama when they met both in New York and Paris. In relation to Syria, the content of these commitments will be soon made more evident in the coming resolution on Syria to be adopted by the UN Security Council, which is based on the US and Saudi plan(s) and which Russia support and will support, as Putin clearly stated today.

From what Putin said, it is also evident that the US-Russian agreement on what to do to Syria has been adopted before Moscow bothered to ask the Syrian government.

The US also demands acceleration of the fulfillment of the Minsk Agreement--the absorption of the DPR and the LPR and their termination under the sovereignty (i.e. monopoly on force) by the Banderite fascists. Putin declared today that he will use his influence over the DPR and the LPR to make them abide by the Minsk Agreements which prescribe their non-existence.

Putin also stated that Erdogan's action was much like liking the US behind, which some commentators struck as crude and vulgar. But one has wonder what good analogy fits Putin's caving in to the US and Saudi Arabia over Syria and Donbass.

One has to start wondering how the Kremlin might fare these days in terms of honor and ethics either with respect to a randomly taken infantry battalion of the Red Army from World War II or with respect to 2) a typical US infantry brigade.

In other news, after several decades, US Congress voted for lifting embargo on export of US oil. Some Russian commentators (including Delyagin) were quick to dismiss this as unimportant. No. This is a game changer. Together with the management of the economy the Russian government is practicing and the continuous draining of the country by the oligarchs, Russia's protracted economic crisis (at least from 2012) is then still only in its early stage.

In this light, the otherwise ludicrous idea of betting on Putin's possible asylum let's say in Israel begins to look better than ever before. It is now a fifty-fifty chance.