Amidst the ongoing conflict in Syria, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has become the name of a new dividing line within the Western lefts. On the one hand, we see numerous analysts and intellectuals criticize the mainstream media tendency to portray Russia as an international thug, an authoritarian regime and a threat to the liberal West. On the others hand, less numerous in ZNet, various voices underlining the the reactionary role played by the Kremlin both inside and outside it´s borders. Syria has been crucial in creating this new divide: since the militarisation of the conflit and the bloody campaign of Bashar al-Assad against the democatic revolution of his people, there are those in the left who cling to a supposedly  anti-imperialist position of support to Assad, like Mélenchon in France, and those who are trying to find dialectically another strategic path than the two-way to the abyss: Assad or Isis. This “excluded third” as it was described by D. Bensaid is central to develop anew internationalist politics today.

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