Driving the Russians out of Syria

The Damascus regime has fallen, and the Kremlin has exfiltrated Bashar al-Assad, whom it considers a kind of humanitarian refugee. The question now arises of Russian bases in Syria. Notwithstanding the unrest there, their fate is said to be “on hold” (Dmitri Peskov, December 16, 2024). Some speculate about the “pragmatism” of Vladimir Putin, prepared to compromise with “armed fighters” and other “opposition representatives.” The strategic, and therefore geopolitical, stakes are high. So it is important that that which is falling should also be pushed.

The collapse of the Damascus regime on December 8 calls into question Russia’s power and influence in Syria, marking a historic turning point. This is no overstatement: even as the French Mandate, in the aftermath of the Second World War, was not yet complete, Moscow was delivering arms and negotiating an alliance with Syria, the gateway to a region where England was still hegemonic; the history of diplomatic and strategic relations between Moscow and Damascus is a long one, set against the backdrop of the famous “Eastern Question” and the so-called “warm seas” strategy. So let us not think that Putin, like a chastened trader, will accept his losses and move on to something else¹ (the Ukrainian front alone).

Already, Russian diplomats are claiming that Moscow is negotiating with “opposition representatives” (they are no longer “terrorists”) to preserve its strategic “assets,” including the Tartus naval base and the Khmeimim air base (next to the civilian airport); the Russian armed forces also had a dozen other bases, which have now been evacuated, under the protection of Turkish military forces. Beyond the Middle East, where many Sunni regimes had been impressed by Russia’s military involvement in Syria (in alliance with Iran), these bases enabled Russia to project its power into North Africa (Libya and beyond), sub-Saharan Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

Located midway between the Turkish Straits and the Suez Canal, the Tartus naval base is an essential logistical crossroads for deploying military resources quickly and forcefully in Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), a relay to the Central African Republic and the Sahel countries, from which France has been ousted. Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, used to be another access route, favored until the Russians gained a foothold in Libya, but Wagner and their epigones, their equipment and cargoes left from Tartus and Khmeimim airport. Moreover, the civil war in Sudan, in which Russia is involved on both sides, has rendered obsolete plans for a major Russian naval base on the Red Sea (at Port Sudan).

In short, these two bases were means of power projection on the scale of the “Greater Mediterranean” and in Africa, with effects on other theaters. We must also take into account the Russian intelligence resources located on Syrian territory – they were withdrawn even before the fall of Damascus – a system that ensured surveillance of the Middle East and its surrounding areas. The transfer of information and location data by Russian armed forces is said to have been a precondition for several Houthi attacks on Western merchant ships in the Red Sea, with all the repercussions this has had on traffic, inflation and, ultimately, the global economy².

In addition to the fact that the war of aggression in Ukraine is absorbing the attention of the Kremlin and the Russian General Staff, and consuming the military and financial resources required, it appears that Moscow, should it lose its bases in Syria, would have few other geostrategic options. In Cyrenaica, the Russian armed forces’ port and airport infrastructures would not compensate for the loss, and in this unstable theater, it would be perilous to finance their upgrading. Does Russia even have the means? In Sudan, the ruthless civil war is thwarting the Kremlin’s naval and military ambitions; the Port Sudan/Bangui/Bamako (and other) logistics axis is in trouble³.

In the Balkans, Serbia could put relay bases at the disposal of the Russian air force, but it is likely that the West has enough influence to dissuade Belgrade from doing so. Finally, the Russian navy has no naval air group capable of projecting forces and power into the Mediterranean: its old aircraft carrier (the Admiral Kuznetsov) is virtually out of service, and cannot be compared with a mobile, sovereign naval air base⁴ (which is what a real aircraft carrier is). Theoretically, the Russian navy could build the helicopter carriers that France has refused to deliver (the Mistral projection and command ships), but this is compromised⁵. In any case, “a helicopter carrier doesn’t make a port, let alone an airport” (French expert on Russian military and security affairsCyrille Gloaguen).

While it is important not to underestimate Putin’s views and resolve, the fact remains that alternative strategic options are limited. Could the master of the Kremlin find common ground with a future Syrian government to retain Russian bases, relying on the intervention of his Turkish counterpart? If Moscow and Ankara are indeed associated in a kind of conflicting synergy, it seems likely that Recep Tayyip Erdogan will take things further in Syria. It is the name of the game: the balance of power dictates who gets what, in the Middle East as in the Caucasus and Africa⁶.

The new masters of Syria, if they are to establish themselves in the long term, will have to be prepared to show mercy to those who have massively bombed them over the past decade. All the more so as the Russian bases are located in the geographic base of the Alawite al-Assad clan; once the time for political communication and consultations has passed, it will be time for the settling of scores between Sunnis and Alawites, with all that this implies for the security of the Russians in this geographic area (if they are still there). In short, the supposedly reasoned Machiavellianism of the chancelleries is unlikely to absorb the power of the shockwave caused by the fall of the regime⁷.

Incidentally, Western powers should not rely on external factors or the “invisible hand” of universal history to settle the case of Russia’s presence in Syria. Admittedly, the main theater is Ukraine, where the Russian armed forces are threatening to break down the gates of Europe within its historical and geocultural limits (from the Atlantic to the Don, the ancient Greeks’ Dôn). But this war is part of a wider space, from the Barents Sea to the Mediterranean, where NATO must stand firm.

Russia’s withdrawal from Syria will not be enough to make the decision and prevail in this global confrontation conceived, designed and willed by Putin, who considers himself at war against a “collective West” doomed to irreverence. At the very least, the evidence of Russia’s strategic failure in Syria, and the depletion of resources invested in the murderous Damascus regime, will alter the correlation of forces, with repercussions in other theaters and spheres of power.

To register these strategic gains and push Russia back into the much-cherished Eurasia, the Western powers need to maintain their unity and push in the same direction. Of course, their diplomacy is in full swing, but there are also calls for realism and reason, as if a “grand entrenchment” would disarm the logic of power and dissolve the very phenomenon of hostility. But these are merely masks for a paralysis of will. On the contrary, they need to conjure up the spectre of Hamlet and make sure that that which is falling should also be pushed.

Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier

Associate professor of history and geography and researcher at the French Institute of Geopolitics (University of Paris VIII). Author of several books, he works within the Thomas More Institute on geopolitical and defense issues in Europe. His research areas cover the Baltic-Black Sea region, post-Soviet Eurasia, and the Mediterranean.

1. For a perspective on Russian-Syrian relations, see La chute du régime de Damas et la Russie, Institut Thomas More, Note d’actualité 93, December 2024.
2. This is in addition to arms deliveries to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Iran and its “axis of resistance” (Hezbollah and Hamas).
3. Moscow’s African customers have bases that can be used by Russian jumbo jets, but without the Syrian relay, logistical flows would be less significant.
4. Launched in 2018, the modernization of the Russian aircraft carrier is proving extremely difficult and uncertain (see the ship’s overturn in dry dock and its fire).
5. Construction of two Russian helicopter carriers, more massive than the French BPCs, has begun, but the site is in Kerch, in a war zone. It has been targeted several times by Franco-British missiles (Scalp/Storm Shadow).
6. In the event of an American withdrawal from northeastern Syria and an extension of the Turkish “security zone” to the detriment of the Kurds, there might well be common ground between Ankara and Moscow. But will the Turks still need a Russian agreement to do this, to the detriment of their power and influence in Damascus?
7. The destruction of a large part of Syria’s arsenals by the Israeli army is well-advised and salutary. There remains the problem of the chemical weapons possessed and repeatedly used by the Damascus regime. See the lies of the Obama-Putin plan to evacuate Syrian chemical weapons in 2013, under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.