By Olha Chepil | 2024-12-23

KYIV -- The fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime is one of the biggest geopolitical defeats Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered during his quarter century in power, analysts say.

It is also a blow to his image and ambition to become an influential player in the Middle East.

"Russia has lost. That's obvious," Sergei Danilov of Kyiv, deputy director of the Center for Middle East Studies, told Kontur.

"It's lost its authority in the Middle East and the ability to influence neighboring countries. It's also lost an ally that voted dutifully for all of Russia's resolutions [in the United Nations (UN)] and through which the Kremlin could make deals."

In recent days, Russia has evacuated at least 400 troops from the Damascus region in coordination with the rebels who overthrew al-Assad's dictatorship, the Financial Times reported December 16.

Negotiations about the evacuation of more Russian soldiers scattered across the country are ongoing.

The potential loss of Russian bases in Syria will profoundly affect Russia's ability to project power to the Mediterranean, operate in Africa and counteract NATO's southern flank, analysts say.

"This is a clear defeat in terms of having an on-the-ground military presence, losing influence in the region and more generally in the perception in the Global South," said Dmytro Levus, a Kyiv-based political and international relations analyst at the think tank United Ukraine.

"Russia has demonstrated weakness and military and political ineptitude," he told Kontur.

If it were not for the Kremlin's support, al-Assad's regime would have crumbled between 2015 and 2016, said Levus. Now the entire world is getting a glimpse of the daily horrors citizens endured under his rule.

"Russia knew exactly what the Assad regime was," Levus said. "Now we're seeing the regime's prisons open, we're seeing these execution pits open, we're seeing all these savage stories about [inmates] who were in these prisons for decades without being sentenced."

"Russia supported all of this."

The civilian cost

Russia launched its military operation in Syria in August 2015 when it sent mercenaries and its air force there.

In doing so, the Kremlin tried to achieve several objectives at once: emerge from isolation after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and reclaim the role of intermediary and influential player in the Middle East, Danilov said.

"What were Russia's main interests in Syria? To get back to the negotiating table," he said. "After 2014 and its annexation of Crimea, Russia was isolated. No one sat down to negotiate with it. It was a pariah."

Russia's intervention in Syria set off one of the biggest human displacement crises in the world, said Danilov.

By the end of 2022, there were more than 6.5 million Syrian refugees worldwide, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The war had "killed more than 507,000 people" as of early 2024, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in March, according to AFP.

Putin feared that if al-Assad were to be overthrown, the revolution that flared up in Syria in 2011 would spread to the post-Soviet space, Danilov said.

"He believed that the fall of the al-Assad regime would threaten him personally. That's why he sent troops in," he said.

From the very beginning of its intervention in Syria, Russia continually pounded the country with air strikes, decimating cities and deliberately targeting civilians.

'General Armageddon'

Russia's actions in support of al-Assad were so ruthless that the commander who ordered them was nicknamed the "Butcher of Aleppo" and "General Armageddon."

"Sergei Surovikin commanded the Russian campaign in Syria... He distinguished himself in Syria by wiping out civilians," Oleksandr Halaka, a military analyst who headed Ukrainian military intelligence from 2003 to 2008, told Kontur.

In a report released on October 15, 2020, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that Surovikin also bore responsibility for the bombardments of Aleppo, which the Russian air force leveled in 2016.

Under Surovikin's command, hospitals in Idlib province were bombed even though many children were known to be in them, according to HRW. The report also stated that Surovikin approved -- if not ordered -- chemical attacks on civilians in Syria.

"The Russians had air supremacy. Their aircraft did whatever they [Russia] wanted," Halaka said. "They bombed the civilian population and bombed cities to the point of flattening them. They fought with civilians."

"How many people died in Syria? Hundreds of thousands, but that's not counting the military -- that's just civilians," he said. "On top of that, they used vacuum bombs and phosphorus bombs. Anything that's banned under the conventions of warfare -- you name it, they used it."

Geostrategic interests in peril

Syria played a key role in Russia's military strategy in the Middle East as its Mediterranean coast holds two crucial facilities: the Hmeimim air base and the naval base in Tartus.

The Hmeimim base is a key logistics hub for operations in Africa, as personnel and cargo, including that of the Wagner mercenary force, are deployed to the continent from there.

"The Kremlin took hold of bases in the Mediterranean to pressure the West and to continue to carry out operations near North Africa," Levus said. "For Putin, the Tartus base always operated as a naval base or for logistics for the [Russian] fleet."

Russia's interference in Syria was also driven by economic interests.

"Syria has oil fields, where Russian businesses got involved, and phosphate extraction, which Russia also made use of," Levus said. "Another important thing is that when it went into Syria, the Kremlin did away with the competition and then retained an almost exclusive right to supplying gas to Europe."

As long as al-Assad ruled Syria, Qatar had no hope of building a pipeline across Syria to transport natural gas to Türkiye and onward to Europe.

This veto by al-Assad helped keep the European Union dependent on Russian gas until it finally sought other suppliers after Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine.

But now, everything could change.

The Russians are continuing to retreat from Syria. Russian military columns are gathering at the Hmeimim and Tartus bases, where planes depart to fly troops back to Russia.

"We can see that the Russians are demoralized," Levus said. "They've plainly lost their status on the world stage."