One year after Assad’s fall, Meduza asks political scientist Hanna Notte about the state of Russian–Syrian relations
Exactly one year ago today, Syrian rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) declared the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Russia had spent years propping up its long-time ally and targeting the very forces now in power, and many observers assumed Moscow would now be pushed out of Syria altogether. But the Kremlin moved quickly to build ties with the new leadership, shifting its stance overnight. Russian envoys traveled to Damascus in January for negotiations, and in October, Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, visited Moscow, where he told Vladimir Putin he would uphold the agreements inherited from the previous government. Meduza spoke with Hanna Notte, director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, about how Syrian–Russian relations have evolved one year after Assad’s fall.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
— Russia was widely expected to lose its foothold in Syria after its ally Assad’s fall. Yet at an October 15 meeting in Moscow, President Ahmed al-Sharaa told Putin he would honor all past agreements between the two countries. How was Moscow able to navigate the power transition?
— When Bashar al-Assad fell on December 8, 2024, Russia pivoted quickly to engage Syria’s new leaders. In fact, Syria’s foreign minister, [Asaad] al-Shibani, recently said in an interview that HTS had engaged the Russians days before launching its decisive offensive and had assured them that they would not force Russia out of the country, if Assad were to fall. So, the Russians may even have had a bit of time to get used to the impending new realities.
In any event, once Assad was gone, Russian TV stopped calling HTS a terrorist group overnight. In January 2025, a Russian delegation travelled to Damascus for negotiations on the future status of Russia’s bases, Russian contributions to Syria’s economic recovery, and other issues. Intensive Russian diplomatic efforts to build ties with Syria’s new leaders continued through spring and summer, culminating in a visit to Moscow by a large Syrian government delegation in July and then al-Sharaa’s visit in October.
It’s not been easy for the Russians to navigate this power transition, with many of their former contacts on the ground either sidelined or gone. Part of the reason why they’ve managed quite well has had less to do with their diplomatic savviness and more with the agendas of others: Turkey, Israel, even the Gulf Arab states — all key to shaping Syria’s trajectory — have had their own reasons for not wanting to see the Russians totally gone. I’ve argued elsewhere that Russia has emerged as “everyone’s favorite hedge” in Syria.
— Why do you think the new Syrian leadership chose to maintain relations with Russia?
— The Syrian leadership had several reasons to stay on amicable terms with the Kremlin. First and foremost, it understood that Russia is a permanent member on the U.N. Security Council, with leverage to help remove the U.N.’s terrorist designations on HTS. In an interview with Al Arabiya soon after taking power, al-Sharaa called Russia “the second most powerful country in the world” — that gives you a sense of how he looks at Russia and why he doesn’t think it wise to antagonize the Kremlin, especially at a time when Syria faces many internal problems and regional challenges and strives for a foreign policy of “zero problems.”
There are other forms of Russian support that the Syrians may hope for: Russia shipped oil, diesel, and wheat to Syria earlier this year, a Russian company has long printed Syria’s currency, and Syria’s new army may also hope for Russian weapons since it’s trained on Soviet and Russian systems. There have been at least three meetings between the Russian and Syrian defense ministers since the summer. Syria’s new leaders have also stated repeatedly that Assad, who has found refuge in Moscow, must be held accountable, but I don’t see Putin handing him over.
Finally, there may be a few broader considerations at play on the Syrian side: By engaging Russia, they’re sending a message to the U.S. and European countries that they have other options. And al-Sharaa might also hope to disabuse any remaining Assad loyalists inside his country of the notion that they could play him and the Kremlin off each other.
— How much influence has Russia actually retained in Syria, particularly against the backdrop of the war against Ukraine, and how important is it today relative to other players?
— Counterfactuals are always tricky, but it is worth asking whether Russia would have mustered the military support last year to prevent the Assad regime from falling, had it not been committed to a war against Ukraine. It is true that Russia somewhat reduced its military presence in Syria due to Ukraine. Russia’s attention also wasn’t laser-focused on Syria, and it seemed to calculate that the status quo of a frozen conflict there could be sustained with resources. But by December last year, we were also in a situation in which Iran and its partners, weakened by an exchange of blows with Israel, weren’t in much of a position to help Assad, and in which the Russians may have grown increasingly frustrated with Assad’s unwillingness to engage in even the most modest of reforms. So, it’s not inconceivable to think that Putin was eventually willing to cut him loose, even without Russian resources sunk deep into a war against Ukraine.
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Today, I would say that Russia’s influence in Syria is rather modest compared to that of other players — Turkey, Israel, the U.S., the Gulf states. The Israelis, for instance, no longer see much of a need to heed the Russian military in Syria; just look at their repeated raids in southern Syria and even Damascus. There have also been reports saying that Russian military personnel have to give prior notice of their movements to Syria’s Internal Security Service and are only allowed to travel under escort. So, they’re much more constrained than in the past. And more than anything, Syria now needs economic support and financial investment, and here it is hard to see that Russia could bring anything to the table, with its economy squeezed due to the war in Ukraine.
— After years of calling HTS a terrorist organization and bombing its positions, Russian state media immediately shifted to calling the rebels the “opposition” after Assad’s fall. And in early November, Moscow even backed a U.S.-sponsored U.N. resolution lifting sanctions on HTS leaders. How is this reversal perceived inside Russia, especially among the military and diplomatic establishment?
— The Russian leadership has generally been quite good at spinning what outside observers may see as Moscow “abandoning allies” as “no big deal.” We’ve seen that in the Kremlin’s framing of its abandonment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians in September 2023 and more recently amid the Twelve-Day War, when its partner Iran took a heavy beating. The same applies to the fall of Assad and Russia’s subsequent diplomatic volte-face. First of all, Russian state TV tried to draw as little attention to the events as possible and Putin only commented on them days later. And second, Russia framed its pivot as historically consistent policy, arguing that it had always supported Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the idea that the Syrian people determine their own future — and that that policy was independent of who was leading the country.
What Russian military and political elites really thought about the fall of Assad is harder to gauge, since few will nowadays openly write and criticize Russian official policy. Some military bloggers initially panicked that Russia may lose its bases on the Syrian coast, which would have complicated Russian operations in Africa, but that panic was short-lived. It seems to me that some Russian elites are definitely wary of al-Sharaa and skeptical of his ability to stabilize Syria, but they will not say so too openly and loudly at this time.
— How do Syrians perceive the new government maintaining relations with Moscow, given Russia’s past role in the war?
— Here, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Syrian society is not monolithic. I think many Syrians certainly loathe Russia for the countless bombs it dropped on the country in support of Assad. They won’t just forgive Russia for that. But at the same time, it’s worth mentioning that Syrians still view Russia as a great power — cynical, pragmatic, ruthless, but a great power nonetheless. And unlike Iran, they never perceived Russia as a sectarian actor, bent on changing the very fabric of Syrian society. I have not seen any recent opinion polls from inside Syria, but I would imagine that these layers of attitudes combine to explain why a majority of Syrians might tolerate the government maintaining a modicum of relations with Russia.
— Do you see this new Russia–Syria rapprochement as something durable, or is it more of a temporary accommodation based on short-term interests?
— My current assessment is that Russia will manage to retain a foothold in Syria over the medium- to long-term, but it will be a very modest foothold. I don’t really see developments on the horizon that would cause al-Sharaa to oust Russia from its bases, especially given the fact that the Trump administration does not appear to have a big issue with that presence. An open question is what will happen if and when Russia’s campaign in Ukraine ends, at which point we might see Russia profess an appetite for using Khmeimim and Tartus more actively again as logistics hubs for military operations elsewhere. Might we then see the Syrian leadership put some constraints on Russia?
Another open question is what would happen to the Russian-Syrian relationship if al-Sharaa were to fail to stabilize Syria’s fractured domestic landscape. That’s difficult to predict, however, since Syria’s domestic trajectory amid greatly increased instability would then also depend on the actions of Israel, Turkey, and perhaps even the United States.
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