A.V. FEDORCHENKO, Doctor of Economics, MGIMO University, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Syria Keywords:, the Syrian crisis, ethnic and religious contradictions, Russia's Middle East policy One of the main topics of negotiations at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in June this year was the Syrian crisis. This is quite natural, given the complexity of the conflict situation and the involvement (direct or indirect) of many states in the Syrian events. Despite the apparent similarity of the "Arab Spring" processes, the specifics of each Arab country are obvious. Syria has already taken a special place in this transformation process. The civil war, which claims tens of thousands of lives, many hundreds of thousands of refugees to neighboring countries, the aggravation of the inter - confessional and inter-ethnic components of the internal conflict, the intervention of external forces-all this requires drastic solutions. In general, in the Arab world, changing political regimes towards stabilization and democratization will take a long time. "Revolutions" here start easily, but can last a very long time. In Syria, the conflict, as expected, has entered a protracted stage. Government forces and the armed opposition are suffering serious losses. The number of civilian casualties is constantly increasing. According to the UN, about 70,000 people have died in the country since March 2011. During the two years of confrontation, tens of thousands, and according to other sources, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees settled in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. Intensive infiltration of militants and supplies of weapons to the opposition continues. MILESTONES OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT Popular demonstrations demanding political reforms began in March 2011. Initially, the authorities combined the use of harsh methods of suppressing demonstrations with selective political and economic reforms. The Syrian authorities have taken a number of measures aimed at ... Read more