explainers

The Syrian civil war is suddenly unfrozen. How much can Russia afford to support the Assad regime this time?

Source: Meduza

Last week, a coalition of rebels led by a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ended a years-long stalemate in Syria’s civil war, capturing the city of Aleppo as well as other towns and villages in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces. The breakthrough is widely considered to have been made possible by the fact that Iran and Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s backers since war first broke out in the country in 2011, are currently preoccupied with their own regional conflicts. For insight into whether Russia has the capacity to provide the support Assad needs to stave off the rebels even as it continues waging its own war in Ukraine, we spoke to an expert from Meduza’s Razbor (“Explainers”) team.

For security reasons, this article refers to Meduza’s correspondent simply as “the expert.”

From ‘sandbox’ to crisis zone

On Sunday, four days after the Syrian rebels’ offensive in northwest Syria began, Russian military bloggers began reporting that Sergey Kisel, the general in charge of Russia’s troops in Syria, had been dismissed from his post.

Kisel was first sent to Syria in May 2022, after Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army, under his command, failed to capture the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv in the initial months of Russia’s full-scale invasion. If the reports of Kisel’s dismissal are true, it should come as no surprise. As experts Hamidreza Azizi and Nicole Grajewski note in Foreign Policy, Moscow has long considered its role in helping the Assad government recapture Aleppo in 2016 to be its “defining achievement in Syria.” The city’s fall to rebel forces therefore represents “a symbolic challenge to Russia’s claim of being able to decisively shape Syria’s future.”

Journalist Pjotr Sauer echoes this point, writing in The Guardian that Russia’s support of Syria marked a shift in its foreign policy and allowed it to “[reclaim] its place as a dominant player on the global stage.” Hannah Notte, an expert on Russian foreign and security policy, called the loss of Aleppo a “reputational blow to Russia.”

Azizi and Grajewski also point out that Russia’s military presence in Syria is a key part of its wider regional influence, giving it access to the Mediterranean via its naval base in Tartus and allowing it to “maintain its role as a key player in Syria and beyond” through the Khmeimim air base.

On Saturday, Russia carried out airstrikes on Aleppo for the first time in eight years. The Russian and Syrian air forces have continued to target the city in recent days, as well as to fire on rebel-held areas in neighboring provinces.

Figures such as former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, however, have expressed doubt that Russia is currently capable of supporting Assad as decisively as it did in the 2010s.

The investigative outlet The Insider reports that Russian pro-war Telegram channels criticized not just Kisel but also what they described as Moscow’s “entire system” of sending generals who had lead unsuccessful operations in Ukraine to Syria. “The Syrian sandbox has long been a place for laundering the reputations of failed generals who proved incompetent in the special military operation zone,” wrote the popular channel Rybar.

Russia has indeed sent generals who didn’t succeed in Ukraine to serve in Syria in recent years, according to Meduza’s expert: “Probably because there was a stable ceasefire in Syria, which meant there was nothing there to mess up.” And before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the expert explained, Syria was a place for Russian generals to “prove themselves.” This resulted in most Russian officers having similar ideas about military tactics — ideas that often didn’t transfer well to the war in Ukraine.

Can Russia spare the resources to save Assad again?

Since February 2022, Russia has maintained several military bases in Syria and left some forces in the country, but it has also withdrawn significant forces to aid the invasion of Ukraine. According to Meduza’s expert, these include several special forces brigades, Wagner mercenary units, some helicopters and Su-34 bombers, and numerous artillery units.

“Remaining forces, which operate on a rotational basis, include some special forces units, security for air bases and the Tartus naval base, and part of an aviation group,” Meduza’s expert said. “It was likely assumed that the 2020 agreements with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan would ensure Syria’s security, meaning Russia deemed the remaining troop numbers sufficient.”

At the same time, even despite the war in Ukraine, Meduza’s expert believes Russia could be capable of the same level of intervention it made starting in 2015. “This is quite possible if Iran restores its forces in Syria to their previous levels, including [Iranian]-controlled militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and units of Lebanon’s [Iran-backed militia] Hezbollah,” the expert explains. “Iran has always provided the ‘cannon fodder’ for joint operations in Syria. Russia could redeploy special forces brigades, though this would slightly weaken its front in Ukraine.”

However, Moscow would have to overcome some logistical hurtles: since Turkey closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to all military ships in 2022, it’s “unlikely Russia would be able to operate the ‘Syrian Express’ as it did before — which poses a problem for adequately supplying a large number of troops,” the expert said.

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In the longer term, Russia is likely to face even more complex challenges on the ground. In October 2023, in an article referring to Syria as Russia’s “forgotten front,” international affairs expert Nikia Smagin wrote that a “weakening of Russia’s influence [in Syria] seems inevitable” after the formal dissolution of Wagner Group:

A year later, according to Meduza’s expert, even though many Wagner Group fighters are still active in the Russian military or in splinter groups working in Africa, the paramilitary cartel’s collapse is irreversible. “Wagner has fragmented into separate factions, lost manpower (even compared to the time of the war in Syria), and lost centralized control,” he said. “The forces fighting in Africa are clearly insufficient to change the situation in Syria.”

Nonetheless, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) reported on Tuesday that Russia is indeed sending mercenary forces to Syria. “Moscow’s leaders decided to send mercenaries from ‘private military companies’ to the Middle Eastern country to help them. The arrival of fighters — probably from the so-called ‘Africa Corps’ — is expected,” the agency said.

Russia and Turkey have long backed opposing parties in Syria but have maintained a working relationship that has allowed Ankara to act, for example, as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. According to Meduza’s expert, it’s too soon to tell what these developments will mean for Russia and Turkey’s relationship.

“We don’t know what informal agreements are currently in place between Putin and Erdoğan. There’s even a conspiracy theory suggesting that Putin has ‘sold out’ Assad to Erdoğan in exchange for something, which would fit their previous relationship dynamics,” Meduza’s expert said. “We also don’t know how involved Turkey was in planning [the Aleppo] operation.”

The expert also notes that while HTS partners with Turkey, it’s not completely subordinate to Ankara. “Pro-Turkish forces joined the offensive later, from the territory they seized in the Kurdish cantons north of Aleppo,” he said.

On Tuesday evening, Russia state media reported that Putin and Erdogan had held a phone call to discuss the situation in Syria. The two leaders “emphasized the importance of close coordination between Russia, Turkey, and Iran in the process of resolving the situation in Syria,” the Kremlin reportedly said.