Abstract

This study aims to explain the factors of direct Russian intervention in Syria, and to determine the role of the "security doctrine/ Operational Code" in Putin's general political operational code in making and implementing the decision to intervene. Based on a complex historical analytical descriptive approach. The constant common between the the two phases is the centrality of the security operational code, represented in the Chechen question in the North Caucasus, and its link between external and internal security threats, in addition to the security reading of what is known in Russia as "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring revolutions" as a Western conspiracy to weaken Russia and threaten Russian internal security through its influence, especially with the dramatic development of the events of the Syrian revolution in the re-emergence of the Chechen question in the North Caucasus.

The problem of the study was based on testing its hypotheses, distinguishing between governing variables in the decision to intervene (the security question) and influencing elements (Russian geopolitical interests in returning to the Middle East, strategic and commercial interests, Russian military trade... etc). The hypotheses of the study were based on that these interests played influential role and not the role of decisive ruling elements, but their expansion was one of the results of the final dependent variable for Russia to become a Middle Eastern power, but paradoxically without a Middle Eastern policy so far in general.