Will Assad’s defeat be Putin’s Waterloo?

The Assad regime in Syria has become a casualty of Moscow’s increasingly desperate efforts in Ukraine, and its collapse is a strategic and operational blow that undermines the narrative of Russia as ascendant, Kyiv as doomed, and Vladimir Putin as strategic mastermind.Russian forces had been fighting for Assad since at least late 2015, when Moscow decided to intervene in the Syrian civil war on behalf of a family regime it had supported with military aid since the 1950s. Putin also sought