- 04
- Dec.
- 2024
The eruption of fighting in Syria has caught Russia off guard as it rushes to stabilize Assad’s frontlines, with analysts predicting that recent developments may increase the likelihood of a negotiated settlement in the war-ravaged country.
Syria’s 12-year Civil War has surged to the top of global news bulletins this week after rebel fighters – largely under the banner of Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – seized control of Aleppo, the country’s second largest city, advancing to the outskirts of Hama, a key node linking Damascus to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Alawite heartland on the littoral.
The seismic ruptures of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have weakened the position of Assad’s two key supporters, Russia and Iran. The rebels, largely isolated and restrained in northern Syria’s Idlib province for the last eight years, appear to have seen an opportunity to reverse the decline of their fortunes.
However, both Russia and Iran have pledged to continue their support for the Assad regime and, in recent days, Moscow has renewed an intensive campaign of airstrikes designed to blunt the advance of the rebel groups.
How Putin turned the tables on the Syrian Civil War
In autumn of 2015, at the request of the regime in Damascus, Russia launched a military intervention in Syria against the fractured and increasingly Islamized Syrian opposition.
Russia carried out a broad campaign of airstrikes across Syria, with a particular focus on the strongholds of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo and Hama. Simultaneously, special forces, military advisers and the now infamous Wagner Group were sent to prop up the Syrian army on the ground.
In public, Putin described the intervention, under the pretext of “the war on terror,” as an action to limit the growing influence of al-Qaeda and ISIS within the opposition movement. Yet in private, Russian officials disclosed to Reuters that the primary geopolitical objective was to counteract American-backed factions in order to preserve Russia’s influence over its erstwhile Cold War ally in Damascus.
The intervention was successful in bringing the regime back from the brink of complete destruction. By the end of 2016, Aleppo had been recaptured following a brutal, grinding siege, and by 2018, the southern enclave of rebels had entirely collapsed.
At this point, the opposition movement had been largely reduced to the province of Idlib, where it floundered, cut off from the global economy by harsh multilateral sanctions and riven by frequent infighting.
A frozen Syria in a changing region
In 2017, the Astana Format was launched between the Syrian government, Russia, Iran and Turkey, establishing a “de-escalation zone” in Idlib province. This essentially froze the conflict in place and allowed Assad to shore up support in other parts of the country.
Yet, over the past seven years, as the Syrian Civil War remained frozen, the wider region continued to change – a transformation radically accelerated following the October 7 attacks.
For Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Syria became less of a priority. As the war dragged on and the demands on the Russian military and its war industry increased, Moscow was forced to redeploy a significant portion of its ground forces stationed in Syria to Ukraine in mid-2022.
Similarly, Iran and Hezbollah, representing the second pillar of support for Damascus, have also been weakened by their war with Israel over the last year, opening up an opportunity that rebel groups have seized.
However, according to analysts, while Russia is currently overburdened by its obligations in both Ukraine and Syria, it remains in its interest to continue supporting the Assad regime.
“Russia's support for Syria's Assad regime remains both strategic and pragmatic,” says Mohammed al-Basha, founder of the Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory firm. “While Russia is unlikely to abandon its Syrian ally, assistance will likely be more measured and strategically calculated compared to the robust intervention seen in 2015.”
“The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has stretched its resources, limiting the scale of support it can provide to Syria. Assad urgently needs advanced military aid, yet, with Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces showing reluctance to bolster Syrian forces, the regime finds itself in a precarious position.”
The Russian interest in Syria
As rebel forces approach the outskirts of Hama, a key city linking the Syrian littoral with the hinterland, they place both Assad and Russia in a precarious strategic position.
For Assad, the largely Alawite regions on the Mediterranean Sea are the primary support base for his Alawite-dominated government. If the rebels manage to sever the link between the government institutions in Damascus and the Alawite constituencies, it could risk isolating the capital strategically.
Similarly, for the Russians, primarily based in the Hmeimim airbase and the naval base in Tartus, both situated in the coastal regions, the fall of Hama could make it more difficult to organize air sorties from satellite bases in the hinterland.
Their support for the Assad regime has also allowed them to secure a highly strategic warm-water port in the Mediterranean at Tartus, crucial for Russia’s ability to project power beyond its home ports in the Black Sea and central to its claim to be a “Great Power.”
Yet, according to Basha, he has been tracking Russian ships being moved out of the port in recent days, potentially signaling that the Russians feel their position on the littoral could be threatened if Hama falls.
However, Basha is equally skeptical that Hama will fall, saying, “I’ve also been tracking the brigade deployment around Hama, and it is significant, so it seems like Assad has decided to draw the line of defense there. I think Hama will be the new border going forward.”
What comes next?
Although Basha believes that Assad will attempt to hold the line around Hama, he does not believe that the Russians are capable of reversing his fortune as they did in 2015.
“In 2015, the airstrikes were effective due to their intensity, followed up with an organized ground offensive, but right now the Syrian ground operations are a mess, and their capacity to strike is limited.”
If Assad’s capacity to roll back the advance appears limited, the coming period seems uncertain for the regime.
However, according to Yeghia Tashjian, Regional and International Affairs Cluster Coordinator at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, the Turks – the primary international backer of the rebel forces – have little appetite for the overthrow of the regime.
“I don’t think their main objective is to topple Assad. Turkey’s primary interest is returning Syrian refugees in Turkey to safe zones in Syria and resolving the Kurdish issue in the northeast,” Tashjian told This is Beirut. “The Turks were likely afraid that Trump would pull US troops from the Kurdish parts of Syria, creating a power vacuum that they’re unable to fill.”
“I think they will seek to negotiate with Assad. Russia is still in Syria, and Russia is still engaging with Turkey to find some sort of negotiated solution.”
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