By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Russia Isn’t Done with Syria

When armed factions led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last December, many observers believed that Russia’s days in Syria were numbered. For decades, Moscow had nurtured close ties with the Assad family; less than a year ago, it bombed areas controlled by HTS. As the head of HTS, Ahmed al-Shara, took the reins in Damascus, Russia’s military presence in the country is hanging by a thread. Russians worried, too. Shortly after Assad’s fall, Russian newspapers bemoaned the loss of a key ally in the Middle East, and military bloggers panicked over the future of Russia’s bases and outposts in the country.

Since then, however, Russia has defied expectations, holding on to its main bases on Syria’s coast—the Tartus naval facility and the Hmeimim airbase—and even entrenching itself in the country’s northeast.

Russian diplomats moved quickly to engage the new rulers in Damascus, benefiting from Syrians’ perception that Russia is a great power and Shara’s desire to build positive relations with all external governments. Syria’s new leaders have, in turn, taken a constructive tone with Moscow, hoping for Russian energy, grain, friendly votes at the UN, and possibly, arms. By engaging Russia, Shara’s government also seeks to deter former Assad loyalists from rearing their heads, to warn Western states that Syria can look elsewhere for support on energy and defense, and perhaps even to limit Israeli military action within its borders.

Other interested parties want Russia to retain a modest presence in Syria, too: as different forces vie for clout, Russia has emerged as everyone’s favorite hedge. Both Israel and Turkey calculate that Russia’s influence could be leveraged to prevent the other from becoming too strong. And the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia, want Russia on their side in case the United States abandons them or Damascus tries to quash their hopes for autonomy.

The possibility that Russia could retain its foothold in Syria has caused some unease among European officials. In the spring, for instance, members of the European Parliament appealed to Syria’s new government to ban Russia’s military presence. Even if Moscow manages to preserve its bases, however, it will not be among the key players to shape Syria’s destiny. Bogged down in Ukraine, it simply lacks the financial and military resources to do so, and it will be eclipsed by the Arab Gulf states, Turkey, and, should they step up their engagement, the United States and European countries. U.S. and European leaders should accept that Russia will have a modest presence in Syria and avoid forcing Syria’s new government to pick between their help or Russia’s. The best way for Washington and its partners to prevent an ambitious Russian return is to lend concerted and patient support for Syria’s governance and economic recovery.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, July 2025

 

My Enemy’s Friend?

Russia’s ties with the Assad family go back to the Cold War, when Hafez al-Assad—Bashar’s father—solidified Syria’s place in the Soviet Union’s orbit. When Bashar parachuted into power in 2000, he felt no special affinity for Russia. He traveled to London and Paris before visiting Moscow. But he still maintained Syria’s friendly relations with the Kremlin. A decade later, when he responded to a peaceful uprising with a violent crackdown that escalated into civil war, Russia shielded his regime from UN Security Council sanctions and, eventually, launched a military intervention to prop him up.

By intervening, Russia gained enormous leverage over the trajectory of the war in Syria. In 2017, Russia deployed its military police to certain so-called de-escalation zones as part of an initiative also backed by Iran and Turkey. By maintaining a military presence in the country and, later, negotiating evacuation deals for rebels, Russia amassed valuable experience dealing with different armed groups. It settled local tensions, imposed security arrangements throughout the country, and cultivated relationships it could benefit from today. Russia also fortified its military footprint on NATO’s southern flank by expanding and upgrading the Tartus and Hmeimim facilities. Other countries intervening in Syria always had to consider Russia. The Gulf Arab states, which for a period supported different rebels; Iran and Hezbollah, which collaborated with Russia on the ground; and Israel, Turkey, and the United States all maintained deconfliction channels with the Russian military.

But when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow became distracted and, in Syria, even complacent. The Kremlin thought it could maintain the Syrian status quo with limited effort and a reduced military presence. As Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack widened, it escalated its attacks on targets linked to Iran in Syria. In response, Russia stepped up its patrols near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Moscow also intensified its bombardments of Idlib Province, a region controlled by anti-Assad rebels, to dissuade them from advancing. But these measures proved too little, too late. The rebels commenced their lightning offensive in late November 2024, and Russian forces largely stood aside, abandoning Assad to his fall.

 

No Permanent Enemies

Many observers expected Assad’s ouster to bring Russia’s influence in Syria to an end. Within days, a spokesman for the new transitional government called on Russia to reconsider its presence in the country. But Russia wasted no time in courting Syria’s new rulers. Overnight, Russian TV stopped calling HTS a terrorist group. At the UN in early January 2025, Russian diplomats commended Syria’s transitional government for acting “competently.” Later that month, a Russian delegation traveled to Damascus for wide-ranging negotiations, including on the future status of Russia’s bases, investments into gas fields and ports, and—according to Syria’s state-owned news agency, SANA—a request that Russia pay reparations for supporting Assad and contribute to Syria’s reconstruction. Syria’s new leaders also asked the Russian government to extradite Assad, who had fled to Moscow. (Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely ever to do so—even now that Syrian authorities have issued a formal arrest warrant—because he wants to maintain a reputation for sticking by his authoritarian partners.)

Russia was especially keen to preserve access to its military bases. Over the years, Tartus and Hmeimim had become critical logistics hubs for Russian operations in Africa. In the immediate aftermath of Assad’s fall, Russia moved naval assets out of Tartus and consolidated its military aircraft, stationed at bases elsewhere in the country, at Hmeimim. In February, Syria’s new defense minister hinted that Russia would be allowed to keep its bases as long as their existence served Syria’s interests. “In politics, there are no permanent enemies,” he said.

Negotiating over its bases, Russia has reminded Syria of the support it can offer. In the spring, Russia shipped oil, diesel, and wheat to Syria. According to Reuters, the Russian company Goznak, which is under British, European Union, and U.S. sanctions and has long printed Syria’s currency, will issue the country’s new banknotes. With its veto on the UN Security Council, Russia could help remove the UN’s terrorist designations, which come with travel bans and asset freezes, on Shara and others close to him. Trained on Soviet and Russian systems, Syria’s new army may also hope for Russian weapons in the future, especially because much of its military capability has been decimated by Israeli strikes over the past year.

Many Syrians loathe Moscow for the countless bombs it dropped on Syrian cities in support of Assad. But Syrians never perceived Russia—as they did Iran—as sectarian or bent on changing the very fabric of their society. Russia was seen as a cynical, pragmatic, ruthless, great power with a long history in the Middle East. These perceptions—plus the fact that Maher al-Shara, Ahmed’s brother, has family ties to Russia—also help explain why Russia was not chased out of Syria outright.

Syria’s new rulers signaled early on that they were willing to build a new relationship with what they called the “second most powerful country in the world.” In July, a delegation of 20 Syrian officials including the foreign and defense ministers, the intelligence chief, and Maher al-Shara, who serves as secretary-general of the presidency, visited Russia. The two countries agreed to reactivate the Syrian-Russian Joint Committee to reevaluate Assad-era agreements and discuss economic cooperation. SANA heralded the visit as the beginning of a new era in relations.

 

Questionable Intentions

Syria’s new rulers have much to deal with in their effort to stabilize the country’s fractured domestic landscape. In March, Sunni militants killed over 1,000 people, many of them Alawite, on Syria’s coast. In July, hundreds of people died in clashes between Bedouin and Druze fighters in the country’s southwest. Israel has captured a buffer zone adjacent to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and regularly hit sites deep inside Syria, even as the two countries have begun to negotiate a security agreement.

In that context, Damascus’s bilateral engagement with Moscow serves several additional purposes. It sends a message to U.S. and European countries that Syria has other doors to knock on. Russian-Syrian diplomacy might disabuse any remaining Assad loyalists inside the country of the notion that they can play the Kremlin and Shara off each other. And Syria’s new rulers may hope that Putin will use his good relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get Israel to rein in its military activities on Syrian territory. As Syria’s new rulers strive for “zero problems” with foreign powers they seem to believe that it is useful to keep things amicable with the Kremlin.

Israel has its own reasons for wanting Russia to maintain a modest presence in Syria. Israel views Shara as a radical Islamist with questionable intentions and fears the growing role of Turkey—a country it accuses of anti-Semitism and spreading political Islam—in Syria and the wider region. Turkey wants a highly centralized Syria to quash the Syrian Kurds’ aspiration for autonomy. Israel, meanwhile, prefers a decentralized Syria—perhaps not as a matter of principle, but because Israel doesn’t trust the country’s current rulers and calculates that a fragmented Syria will be easier to handle. Israel’s leaders seem to think that Russia’s presence might help keep the country divided into zones of influence.

Turkey sees utility in a Russian presence in Syria for many of the same reasons. Ankara has registered Israel’s daring attacks and Saudi Arabia’s forays into Syria with apprehension. In the past, Riyadh has funded the SDF. Turkey hopes that it could turn to Russia to keep Israel at bay, support removing the UN Security Council’s terrorist designation on Shara, supply the weak Syrian military with weapons, and back Ankara’s position against Syrian Kurds. Such hopes are not without basis. When Assad was in power, Russia acquiesced to Turkish military operations against the SDF and jointly patrolled parts of northern Syria with Turkey.

Yet it is perhaps the vulnerable SDF that counts on Russia the most. The group is at risk of losing autonomy as Shara tries to consolidate power. In recent months, the SDF has increased its engagement with Russia with the aim of gaining an advantage over Turkey and the government in Damascus—and to have an additional ally in case the United States makes good on its promise to substantially reduce or even end its military presence in Syria’s northeast. Russia is already moving in. Through the spring and summer, Moscow deployed air defense systems and electronic warfare units—which would allow Russia to jam radio signals—to its base at Qamishli airport (located in a Kurdish-majority area), expanded housing for its troops, and fortified the base’s perimeter. Notwithstanding its cooperation with Turkey, Russia has in the past called for the protection of Kurdish rights and offered to mediate between Kurdish leaders and Syria’s central government. Israel, Turkey, and the SDF each seek to leverage Russia’s presence to accomplish goals that are fundamentally incompatible; given Russia’s shrewd maneuvering in the past, each one has some reason to hope that Moscow will end up supporting their parochial ambition.

 

Down But Not Out

For the foreseeable future, Syria will remain fragmented and weak, with external powers competing for sway over Damascus and for informal spheres of influence. In this fluid landscape, Russia will be one among many players, and far from the most important. As Shara prepares for his first visit to Russia, planned for October, it appears that Moscow has avoided expulsion from Syria. Yet more than anything, Syria now needs economic support, financial investment, and the lifting of all remaining international sanctions. To accomplish these aims, the Arab Gulf states, Turkey, the United States, and European countries will be key, not Russia. Even before it invaded Ukraine, Russia had little bandwidth to focus on Syria’s economic recovery and reconstruction; with its resources now sunk deep into Ukraine, it has even less to spare.

If Russia can hold on to its bases while continuing to prove its utility to the different forces that are competing to shape Syria’s future, it will still be quite a feat. Russia’s influence in Syria and the regional clout that came with it will never be what it was before Assad’s fall. But Russia will retain a military foothold on which it could build in the future—and from which it could continue to support its operations in the rest of the Middle East and Africa, especially once the war in Ukraine ends. Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary outfit, is currently consolidating its presence in West Africa, a region the Kremlin views as important. Retaining its logistics nodes in Syria could help Russia expand there in the future.

Still, Western states should not penalize Syria’s new leaders for engaging Russia in the context of their pragmatic, multi-vector foreign policy. Soon after Assad fell, for example, the Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, suggested that the EU should consider lifting sanctions only if Syria expels Russia. “We want the Russians out,” he said. But Shara has no intention of returning the country to Russia’s orbit. In fact, he is maintaining a delicate balance between Russia and its adversaries. In September, Syria restored diplomatic ties with Ukraine. And it is unlikely that Russia’s bases will serve as a conduit for Iran to claw its way back into Syria. The Israeli military would likely nip such an effort in the bud.

As Syria’s authorities navigate formidable challenges, it only seems prudent for them not to antagonize Russia. Rather than panicking over Moscow’s maneuverings or conditioning their own support on Syria’s total break with Russia, U.S. and European leaders should focus on helping Syrians recover after a decade of civil war and a half-century of despotism. The best way to ensure that Syria will not allow Russia to exploit its territory in the future is to build good relations with Damascus today. But how to avoid another Syrian Civil War: Start with Embracing Federalism.

 

 

For updates click hompage here