I'm John Datchel with my good colleague, Johnson Shanzer, the Foundation for Defensive Democracy, the executive director of Syria.

Despite all the efforts to normalize Al-Sharah, the self-elected president, there are inconsistencies that ordinarily would mean that Al-Shara is not

all normal. This is an extraordinary frontman for bad actors. All right, let's take one moment.

Last week, I believe, were here to four. Damascus representatives were touring the southern part of Syria with Russian

officers talking about establishing checkpoints to be manned by Russians. What the heck? Is this the

same Russian army that's invaded Europe and it's threatening the whole frontier with hybrid conduct? What is Israel

thinking permitting this? I don't get it, Jonathan. Well, I would argue this, that when you think

about all the bad actors that are running around in Syria, whether it's Al-Qaeda or the Turks

or the Qataris or, you know, any of the bad actors.

The Russians are probably among the more predictable. And for many years, actually, dating back to,

I guess it was 2013 or 2014, the Russians had been in Syria working with the Assad regime, the now fallen Assad regime,

and there was a sort of a red phone agreement that existed between the Russians and the Israelis,

that the Israelis could call and say, I've got a problem, and either you need to fix it or

we're going to bomb it. And the Israelis did quite a bit of bombing in

Syria during that time with a wink and a nod from the Kremlin. So in other words, this is a

relationship that the Israelis know how to navigate. They're not afraid of dealing with Vladimir

Putin. They don't love him. They know that he's on the wrong side of a lot of the geopolitical issues

around the world and certainly are antagonistic toward the United States, which is Israel's

closest ally. This is not a friendship, John. This is a relationship that the Israelis understand

how to navigate, and it may well be better to have the Russians there than the Turks. Because if the

Israelis and the Turks start to exchange fire, things can get out of control very quickly.

The Israelis and the Russians are not likely to ever exchange fire. The Russians understand the

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