“If War Comes Tomorrow,” read this week’s edition of Moscow-based magazine The New Times, quoting the title of a famous 1938 Russian propaganda movie on a very Soviet-looking cover, as it wonders what the consequences a new “big war” would be for Russia.
The weekly magazine focuses on the dangers of what it calls “the unexpected war” on the Syrian-Turkish border, where Russia “decided to show the whole world the right way to fight terrorists but ran into his own reflection.”
That “reflection” would be Turkey, a country led by an authoritarian leader who dreams of going back to the greatness of the Ottoman empire. The explosive criss-crossing of rivalries and firepower could trigger a spreading of war well beyond the confines of Syria.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had announced an agreement to try to impose a ceasefire in Syria. But already it appears that fighting is actually escalating instead.
