 Hello, I'm Eugene Rumor. I work at the Carnegie Endowment where I run the Russia and Eurasia program and I'm here at USIP to discuss the issue of Russia in the Middle East with colleagues here. Russia intervened big time with boots on the ground in Syria in 2015 and really played the decisive role in turning around the course of the Syrian civil war and basically save the Assad regime there. So that intervention came as a surprise to many observers including myself at the time, but really that surprise stems from our being accustomed over the past 25 years or so to Russia not being present in the Middle East and it was treated as Russia's return to the Middle East as Russia's return to great power politics, which I think is an important element and clearly with intervening in Syria, saving the Assad regime, Russia demonstrated a number of important qualities that it wants to project as part of its image in the Middle East. Major military power, a major power capable of standing up to the United States and also a partner to dictators in trouble and also a country that really doesn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about values, civil rights and so on, but it really appreciates raw power. Since the start of the war, that complicated dynamic, for example, between Russia and Turkey has become even more complicated because Turkey emerged as a serious supplier of hardware to Ukraine. Also, it's pretty clear that Russian resources are not what they used to be prior to the war in Ukraine. Russia's military performance in Ukraine has been, shall we say, lackluster, which is a blow to its reputation as a major military power. Russia, in the seven years since the intervention in Syria, really has not been able to solve any of the problems that have been long-standing problems in the region and some of the other tensions have increased. For example, the Russian-Israeli relationship where there was a condominium in terms of positioning themselves in Syria and especially in the Syrian airspace, that's become more complicated because Israel has come under more pressure to supply Ukraine with weapons and clearly that introduces new tensions in Russian-Israeli dynamic. Clearly, the dynamics in Ukraine is the central issue that will determine Russian positioning elsewhere. Probably the dynamic between Russia and Saudi Arabia will continue to be of extreme importance. Because of the Saudi-Israelan global oil markets and the ability to moderate or modulate the flow of oil. Clearly, the Russian-Israeli relationship is something to watch because the new Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long had a very close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Now, how that relationship is going to evolve going forward is a big question because probably the Israelis will be under more pressure to supply weapons to Ukraine, which is something that Russians clearly oppose. So I would say also that it's the question of the resources, ultimately, that will be available to Russia. Either resources available to it militarily on the ground in Syria or the flow of oil and the ability of OPEC Plus to cooperate with Russia and willingness of OPEC Plus to cooperate with Russia in dealing with the oil price cap that just went into effect or is going to effect has been agreed to by the European Union. So there are multiple factors to watch here.