Russia’s military role in Syria

Russian state news agencies reported on Sunday that Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia hours after a stunning rebel advance seized control of Damascus and ended his family’s 50 years of iron rule.

Thousands of Syrians poured into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire and waved the revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of an insurgency plunged the country into a nearly 14-year civil war.

The swiftly moving events have now raised questions about the future of the country and the wider region.

“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” US President Joe Biden said, crediting action by the US and its allies for weakening Syria’s backers — namely Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. 

He called the fall of Assad a “fundamental act of justice” but also a “moment of risk and uncertainty,” and said rebel groups are “saying the right things now,” but the US will assess their actions closely.

Meanwhile, Assad and his family are receiving asylum in Moscow, which experts say isn’t surprising — the Kremlin’s political and military support has enabled Assad to cling to power for years. Today, Russia’s military still has boots on the ground in Syria, but with the fall of the Assad regime, that military foothold has become uncertain.

Nikolay Kozhanov is an associate professor at the Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University. He said that Russia first started deploying its troops to Syria in 2015.

“For the first time since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Moscow was deploying its military forces in the Middle East and moreover, deploying in the country that was waging a war,” he said. 

Kozhanov explained that Moscow was compelled to back Assad because he was one of the few overtly pro-Russia leaders in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was concerned that regime changes in the region resulting from the Arab Spring would turn countries against Russia in favor of the West.

Russia established a long-term military presence in Syria by setting up bases throughout the country and taking control of airfields, as well as gaining naval access to the Mediterranean Sea.

According to Kozhanov, Putin sent a message to the US and other Western countries through the presence of Russian troops in Syria.

“By making this unprecedented move, it wanted to show that whether they like it or not, they have to talk to Moscow,” he said.

This was about prestige, a show of strength. But to establish that military presence, Russia needed to keep Assad in power. 

In 2015, Putin maintained that Russia would only fight against terrorist groups. In addition, it would exclusively provide Syria aerial military support, and would not participate in ground operations. Plus, its military support would have an expiration date.

“Russia tried to hide this interference, they tried to show this intervention, like a bloodless intervention for Russian forces. Of course, this was a lie,” said Gleb Irisov, a former officer in the Russian air force who also served in Syria.

“From the very beginning, Russia was involved not just in the air combat, but also on the ground,” he said. “It was just conducted secretly from the people using their paramilitary units like the Wagner group.”

The Wagner group is the notorious Russian private military company formed by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Russia’s military intervention in Syria was a turning point for Wagner, which began operating across the Middle East and Africa.

In a 2023 video, Prigozhin boasted that “Wagner is making Russia great on all continents.”

He went on to say that the group was fighting terrorist groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda, all over the world.

Kozhanov said that Wagner was a convenient tool for Moscow to use in what he calls the “gray zones of warfare.”

In other words, these zones were “where Moscow didn’t want to deploy their official boots on the ground but could use the services of Wagner in order to pursue its goals. And if there was a failure, it could always deny their connection with the Russian military.”

That deniability was crucial, because with Russia’s military presence in Syria, reports of atrocities and war crimes were well-documented.

Russian airstrikes killed thousands of Syrian civilians. In a 2022 report, Human Rights Watch determined that the “Syrian-Russian military alliance has conducted indiscriminate aerial bombing of schools, hospitals, and markets.”

But from the Kremlin’s perspective, human rights were secondary — propping up Assad was seen as highly beneficial for Moscow.

“Russia got a testing ground where it was showing, advertising, testing its military equipment. After 2015, the sales of Russian weapons substantially increased. Meanwhile, the Russian military was getting an expertise of fighting the war overseas,” Kozhanov said.

But things changed in 2022, leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That’s when Russia began reducing its military presence — transferring resources from Syria to Ukraine.

In recent weeks, when Syrian opposition forces began gaining ground, Russia was either unwilling or unable to push back.

“They are just insufficient to do any miracles in order to support Assad, so they are basically like a small grain of sand in a huge storm,” Kozhanov said.

“The way that they’ve spun it is actually very interesting, is how they basically blamed Assad for everything,” said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.

Grajewski said that when opposition troops were advancing, the Kremlin’s narrative was that they had done everything they could, and that this was fully Assad’s failure.

“I was somewhat surprised that the Russians offered him asylum. I mean the Russians have not necessarily liked Assad throughout this whole intervention, throughout this whole campaign, but they realized he was kind of the force in town, the kind of stable leader that they can back,” she said.

Grajewski said that Russia bet on the wrong type of leader in Syria — his fall is seen as an embarrassment to the Kremlin.

“It is a hit, I mean I think it fundamentally shows that the model Russia had was unsustainable, of a country that was highly dependent on external support in order to sustain itself. Russia had kind of gambled on an individual that did not have the best interest of his country at heart, and also the will to preserve it,” she said.

The biggest unknown for Moscow now is whether it will be able to maintain its military presence in Syria.

According to Russian state media, the Kremlin has been in touch with opposition forces, who say that they will guarantee security for Russian bases.

Ultimately though, with the fall of Assad, Russia’s prestige in the Middle East may have taken an irreparable hit. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.