Did Russia really complete its mission in Syria?

President Vladimir Putin has surprised his friends and foes as he announced he is pulling out a major portion of his fighting force from Syria.

The Russians say they have fulfilled their mission to bolster the Assad regime and prepare it for the Geneva negotiations by strengthening their bargaining power and achieving their goals in fighting DAESH.

All this remains to be seen.

Have the Russians really completed their mission in Syria or are they being forced to start disengaging due to the fact that their economy faces a total collapse because of the huge burden of their military operations in the Middle East? It remains to be seen.

What is clear is that the Russians have achieved a bloodbath of innocent Syrian civilians. Their jet fighters, which were supposed to hunt down DAESH, have been active not only in bombing the moderate opposition forces, but also innocent civilians in schools, playgrounds and hospitals. The Russians say they have killed 2,000 "rebels" fighting against the Assad regime. They claimed they hit 200 oil installations operated by DAESH and had cut the supply routes from Turkey.

In fact the Russian airstrikes killed 4,408 people including 1,733 civilians between September 2015 and March 2016 according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. These attacks have devastated human settlements and killed women and children. The supply routes they claim to have cut were the humanitarian relief routes used to provide assistance for the starving masses of northern Syria.

So, U.S. President Barack Obama can boast that his diplomacy of sitting on the sidelines and letting the Russians hand themselves their own rope has paid off. However, President Obama also has to face the bitter fact that American inaction has cost huge civilian casualties and has forced millions out of their homes, flooding Turkey. Can Obama sleep in peace with his achievement?

The Russians boast that they have completed their mission to bolster Assad, but that too remains to be seen once the Russians sit on the sidelines in their naval and air bases on the Mediterranean coast and watch how Assad's forces bolstered by Iranian fighters and Hezbollah try to conquer Aleppo and other areas in northern Syria without Russian air support.

Has Russia given up its intransigent behavior on the international scene or is it reserving its limited resources now to launch a new military campaign against Ukraine and later the Baltic countries? This is a nightmare not only for Ukrainians, but also for the European Union, which is already being crushed by the prospect of a new Syrian exodus. It may also be a blow to Obama, as he sits in the White House and eagerly waits for the day when he will be Mr. Former President after November.

Or, is Putin preparing to liberate Istanbul from the Muslims and turn it into a Christian city while he also controls the Turkish straits as he promised to a group of Ukrainian rebels recently?

The Russians are going (that is of course if Putin is sincere and is not up to one of his tricks) and they are leaving behind a bloodbath that the Syrian people will never forget. For Turkey, the fact that the Russians are leaving has little meaning, as they maintain their military presence in Syria and continue to threaten our airspace and aid Kurdish Syrian terrorists.