The recent Russian and Chinese vetos of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria have been condemned in the strongest terms by Western diplomats — Hillary Clinton called it a 'travesty' and the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, tweeted her 'disgust' at the way events had proceeded.
At first glance, the reasons for the Russian veto seem obvious. Russia has important material interests in Assad's Syria: it continues to make major arms sales to the Assad regime — mainly high-end weaponry such as anti-air defence systems — and Syria hosts the only Russian naval base outside the former Soviet Union, at Tartus.
Furthermore, the Medvedev/Putin administration, itself beset by domestic political protest, has little interest in promoting norms of international censure and intervention into contested — even violent — political situations.
So it is easy to view the Russian veto as merely the outcome of a cynically realist assessment of its interests by the Russian regime. And, of course, it is in part.
But it is not only the Medvedev/Putin regime and its apparatchiks that maintain this position. There are other actors involved in communicating and sustaining Russian opposition to military intervention or orchestrated regime change in Syria, most notably the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill.
Kirill visited Syria in November last year, ostensibly to renew contact with the Syriac Orthodox Church and its leader, Ignatius IV, Patriarch of the Great Antioch and All the East.
There is an important historical context for this visit. Russia's connections with Syria run deeper than mere contemporary strategic interest. Russian interest in Syria and in the broader Middle East stems also from Russia's historical conception of itself as the protector of eastern Christians.
The Crimean War was sparked in part because of Russia's intervention in the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Orthodox pilgrims and religious communities. Catherine the Great, Nicolas I and an assortment of 19th century Russian intellectual and cultural figures planned or advocated a Russian occupation of Constantinople as a means of re-establishing and reviving Christian life in the east — Byzantium would be restored and Russia would lead this enterprise.
And so, with this history not entirely forgotten, Kirill to Damascus. Kirill praised the relationship between the Syrian regime and the Syriac