Image credits- VOA Source- The National Interest Author- Nikolas K. Gvosdev How are we to make sense of Vladimir Putin’s announcement that the bulk of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria is to be withdrawn over an as-of-yet undefined period in the coming weeks and months? Is this a Kremlin victory lap, or a way to extricate Russia from what might prove to be a dangerous and costly mistake? Here are five ways to view Putin’s surprise. 1) Mission accomplished The most straightforward explanation, based on an assessment that the Russian expeditionary deployment, which began last September, was always intended to be a short-term operation. At the time, the Kremlin made no grandiose promises about what its active involvement in the Syrian civil war would bring—no boasting about how the Islamic State would be destroyed or statements about restoring control over all of Syria to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Like the Russian intervention in the Donbass the ye