‘A personal defeat for Putin’ What the failure to protect Assad could mean for Russia’s future
Early Sunday morning, Syrian rebels declared the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, 24 years after he took power. As the opposition celebrated its victory in Damascus, Assad and his family flew to Moscow, where Vladimir Putin personally granted them asylum. The fall of the Assad regime marks an indisputable failure for the Russian president, whose role in keeping Assad in power after Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 has long served as a cornerstone of Russia’s image as a global power and granted it credibility as a guarantor of stability to governments in regions ranging from Central Asia to Africa. Meduza explores why Putin originally intervened in Syria, why Moscow didn’t try harder to prevent the regime’s collapse, and what Assad’s overthrow means for Russia’s future.
Why did Putin intervene in the first place?
When Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops to Syria in 2015, analyst Alexander Baunov writes in an essay for Meduza and the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, his goals were threefold.
Putin’s first aim was to “break out of the post-Crimean isolation” and increase Russia’s global relevance. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Baunov explains, it faced unprecedented isolation from Western nations, while countries in Asia and the Global South “regarded it with cautious confusion.” Baunov points to Putin’s early departure from the G20 summit in Brisbane (he'd already been suspended from the G8) as a turning point:
It was then that Russian diplomacy first took on the task that would later become its main focus: proving that Moscow was by no means isolated, that no one had distanced themselves or recoiled from it, and that everything was as it always had been, or even better.
Putin sought to prove Russia wasn’t isolated by “forcing the West to confront the reality of Russia’s involvement in the Syrian war against a shared enemy,” Baunov writes, referring to terrorist groups like ISIS. This “common enemy” framework had long been part of Putin’s playbook — starting with his assistance to the U.S. following the September 11 attacks. The approach allowed for cooperation “not based on institutions or values but on shared struggle,” similar to the partnership between the Western powers and the USSR in World War II that “preceded the peak of Moscow’s geopolitical strength.”
Secondly, Putin wanted to return Russia to the Middle East, where it had lost influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse. This goal was achieved: at the peak of its intervention, Russia had as many as 6,000 fighters deployed in Syria, including mercenary troops. Its intervention secured access to the Khmeimim airbase and the Tartus naval base, which provided logistical support for military operations far beyond Russia’s borders.
Finally, Putin hoped to “put Russia on the world map as a power capable of halting regime change and supporting an ally anywhere in the world,” Baunov writes. For years, this endeavor was a success: The survival of the Assad regime, supported by Russia and Iran, granted Moscow credibility as a guarantor of security to regimes in countries like Mali and the Central African Republic, as well as among its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Putin’s decision to support Assad was also influenced by the outcomes of two other leaders’ downfalls: former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Moscow after his ouster during Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, and former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was captured and killed by rebels in 2011.
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In Putin’s view, Middle East expert Ruslan Suleimanov explained on Meduza’s daily Russian-language news podcast, “Western intelligence agencies instigated the Arab Spring, and Russia responded with its own ‘no,’ attempting to build a multipolar world because it disapproved of what happened with Gaddafi.”
After all, Suleimanov noted, Gaddafi had previously “moved toward cooperation with the West,” including agreeing to abandon his nuclear project, only to be killed ultimately by NATO-supported rebels. “You could imagine a caricature of Putin cynically lamenting, ‘They tricked him,’” Suleimanov said.
Baunov echoes this point: “In Russia, the Arab Spring was portrayed as a continuation of Kyiv’s Maidan Revolution — a rehearsal for regime change in Moscow itself. Halting the Arab Spring by force was framed as a way to thwart such scenarios at distant front lines,” he writes.
According to Baunov, Putin’s meetings with Assad always appeared cold from the outside, even compared to his meetings with Western leaders. Moscow’s support of the Assad regime was not “assistance to a personal friend” but rather “pure geopolitical business: an attempt to halt the wave of regime changes supported by the West, prevent Syria from becoming another Libya, and settle scores for Gaddafi — and, a bit later, Yanukovych.”
Why didn’t Russia try harder to save Assad?
Putin is laser-focused on winning the war in Ukraine, and Russia’s activities in Syria weren’t helping with this goal.
“The Kremlin clearly realized the futility and impossibility of continuing to support Assad,” Suleimanov told Meduza. “The Russian authorities were likely prepared for Assad’s regime to fall within days or even hours. But this is also driven by sheer self-interest. Right now, the Kremlin is scrambling to patch holes on the Ukrainian front, even resorting to recruiting soldiers from North Korea.”
In Baunov’s view, Putin’s prioritization of Ukraine above all else defies even self-interest.
“The current Putin is so focused on Ukraine that the loss of his only military-political success far from Russia’s borders seems to leave him indifferent,” he writes. “The locally rooted Ukrainian conflict has pushed everything else aside and expanded to a global scale. Syria is irrelevant; nothing matters because everything, including the fate of Russia itself, is being decided in Kherson and Vovchansk.”
In Putin’s conception, according to Baunov, a potential victory in Ukraine represents a victory “in the global struggle of the majority against the Old World Elite.” If Russia wins in Ukraine, according to this view, it can achieve victory in “Syria, Georgia, and wherever else it wants.” But the collapse of the Assad regime only adds to the pressure on Moscow to achieve a victory in Ukraine: “[T]here’s nothing left but to win. So the retreat from Syria is unlikely to bring direct relief for Ukraine.”
What does Assad’s fall mean for Moscow?
Russia’s intervention in Syria highlighted a major issue in Moscow’s relations with the Global South, according to Baunov, given that security is practically the only thing Russia has to offer.
“The first successful projection of power beyond its region since the end of the Soviet era did not go unnoticed in the Global South,” he wrote. “Russia still did not appear particularly convincing as an investor or exporter of production and technology […], but it significantly positioned itself as an exporter of security — both officially, through its military presence, and unofficially, through the provision of mercenary services.”
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While Russia “can regain territories to the military and political control of a friendly regime, it cannot breathe life and development into them,” Baunov explains:
In the regions reclaimed by Iran and Russia, nothing occurred that would make the local population rejoice at Damascus’s control. The restoration of government and certain public buildings and military bases did not change the overall picture of life for millions of people on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe under the pressure of all-powerful, corrupt security forces.
Even worse for Russia, the Assad regime’s collapse shows that even the security Moscow can provide its partners abroad is limited.
“It’s an image blow,” Suleimanov said. “If Putin had the means [to stop the Assad government’s collapse], he would have gotten involved. And even if it required a huge amount of money and resources, I’m sure he would have supported Assad. After 2015, many in the Middle East started to respect Putin because he didn’t abandon his own, because he fulfilled his commitments.”
However, the events of last week have brought Putin’s image as a provider of stability into question. “Putin today is not the same as he was in 2015–2016,” Suleimanov said. “This is a sign of his weakness. And no matter how you look at it, it’s a personal defeat for him.”
Baunov notes that the questions raised by Russia’s failure in Syria pertain to its international capabilities as well as its internal stability:
Professional observers [of Russia] abroad and members of the domestic elite will notice yet another failure of Russia’s intelligence services. First, they were caught off guard by Ukraine’s willingness to fight back; then came the Prigozhin-led mutiny, followed by the incursion in the Kursk region, and now — the swift loss of Syria. And today’s Russia is governed in many areas with direct involvement from the intelligence services. What if they’re just as ineffective there?
