The Syrian crisis and Russia’s growing role in it came under the global media spotlight last week.

While a diplomatic flurry between Russia and the US in the past few months had raised fresh hopes for a political solution to the war in Syria, that new push “has been put in doubt by Russia’s recent moves to significantly bolster military support for Bashar Al Assad, whose hold on his country is weakening,” said the New York Times in an editorial.

“Russia has long been a major enabler of Mr [Al] Assad, protecting him from criticism and sanctions at the United Nations Security Council and providing weapons for his army. But the latest assistance may be expanding Russian involvement in the conflict to a new and more dangerous level,” the editorial said.

Noting that Russia’s intentions are unclear, according to US officials, the newspaper said they are nevertheless so concerned that US Secretary of State John Kerry called Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov twice this month and warned of a possible “confrontation” with Washington if the buildup led to Russian offensive operations in support of Al Assad’s forces that might hit American trainers or allies.

“For the United States, Russia and many other countries, including Iran (Mr Al Assad’s other major ally), defeating [Daesh], ministering to the millions of Syrians forced from their homes and salvaging what is left of the Syrian state should be shared goals. None can be achieved without a political solution that installs a more inclusive and competent government in Damascus.”

Echoing the same sentiment, the Washington Post said in an editorial: “In July, President Obama said he had been ‘encouraged’ by a telephone call Russian President Vladimir Putin had initiated to discuss Syria. The Russians, Mr Obama confidently declared, ‘get a sense that the [Al] Assad regime is losing a grip over greater and greater swaths of territory’ and ‘that offers us an opportunity to have a serious conversation with them’.”

The paper then called into question Obama’s handling of Russia: “Not for the first time, Mr Obama was supposing that Mr Putin could be enlisted in a diplomatic settlement to the Syrian civil war along lines Washington and its Arab allies support. Not for the first time, the president appears to have badly misread the Russian ruler.”

By preparing to deploy Russian ground and air forces to Syria, the paper said, “Mr Putin is acknowledging a truth that Mr Obama has refused to accept: Any political agenda for Syria’s future is meaningless unless it is backed by power on the ground.”

Corbyn election

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in the UK, meanwhile, emerged as a hotly debated issue over the weekend. “The election … is the most extraordinary event in British politics since the universal franchise. Whatever else it does, it sends a powerful message to the establishment that there is an appetite for doing politics differently,” said the Independent in an editorial. Describing Corbyn as an “insurgent who breaks all the rules” and had swept aside an “uninspiring field of conventional candidates,” the newspaper said: “Mr Corbyn does not look like an MP, let alone a prime minister. He has never been a minister or even a shadow minister. His political programme is one that has been regarded as unelectable for all the 32 years that he has been an MP. Yet people have flocked to join the Labour Party to vote for him, attracted by the clarity and sincerity of his stand for the environment, for equality, and against the excesses of capitalism.”

While observing that no Labour leader since Tony Blair “has been given a more decisive mandate to take the party in a new direction than Jeremy Corbyn received on Saturday,” the Guardian sounded a more cautious note, arguing in an editorial that “whereas Mr Blair’s win in 1994 was widely foreseen and supported by Labour MPs following the death of John Smith, Mr Corbyn’s victory was not widely backed or expected by anyone at Westminster when Ed Miliband stepped down in May. From today, the great question is the direction in which Mr Corbyn decides to take Labour, and the wisdom with which he approaches that task.”

However, the Financial Times sounded an outright alarm, commenting in an editorial that Corbyn’s resounding victory “is a catastrophe for the British centre-left”.

“It is a grave development — not just for the 115-year old Labour movement but for British politics itself,” the newspaper said. Warning that Labour’s electorate had ignored the overwhelming message of the British people at every recent poll, the paper said: “Voters put Tony Blair in power three times at the head of a modernised and centrist party branded as New Labour. Last May, they rejected Ed Miliband’s shift leftward. Under Mr Corbyn, New Labour looks dead and buried and the party’s chances of returning to power remote at best.”