In this Crown Seminar with NPR's Deborah Amos, in conversation with Wendy Pearlman, we take a look at how Russia's invasion of Ukraine has impacted the situation in Syria. In the Syrian exile community of Germany, the accounts of Ukrainian cities besieged by Russian forces are tragically familiar. The bombardment of Mariupol, Kharviv and Kherson, seem like a repeat of the 2016 bombing of Aleppo. The tactics, and some of Russia’s soldiers and officers, had come directly from the war in Syria, which Moscow joined in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al Assad. The links between these conflicts, however, are not well understood by many international observers.
Drawing on her decades of covering the Middle East as an international correspondent for NPR, Deborah Amos, in conversation with Wendy Pearlman, examines how Syria was the prelude to Ukraine. Not only was the Syrian intervention the first military action outside the former Soviet Union, but it also gave Russia a revived role in the Middle East and a path to assert Russian power globally.


•Deborah Amos is the Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence at Princeton University and an awardwinning international correspondent for National Public Radio. Her reporting on the Middle East and refugees in the U.S. is regularly featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered.
•Wendy Pearlman, moderator, is a professor of political science, Crown Professor of Middle East Studies, and the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University.
•Naghmeh Sohrabi, chair, is the director for research at the Crown Center and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History.

Cosponsored by the Brandeis University Journalism program, the Brandeis International and Global Studies program, and the Department of Politics at Brandeis.

This program was recorded on March 29, 2023.