The fall of Bashar al-Assad, a setback for Russia

« What a grim morning. » The editor-in-chief of the Russian channel RT Margarita Simonyan, who laments about for Moscow.

Gaining speed, Russia was unable to anticipate or prevent the rapid advance of the rebel troops of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies. Its formidable military aviation, which had played such a crucial role since 2015 in turning the tide of the civil war in favor of Bashar al-Assad, this time proved powerless.

Quite a symbol. Launched a year and a half after the annexation of Crimea, the intervention in Syria was to signal to the world the resounding return of Russia to the forefront of international politics. After a decade during which his political and military action was mainly deployed in the post-Soviet space, the commitment to Bashar al-Assad demonstrated the desire of President Vladimir Putin to establish himself as a key player in the Middle East and beyond.

Inability to react quickly

Under the pretext of fighting “terrorism”, Moscow will have, for a time, saved the Assad regime, an ally of the Soviet Union and then of Russia since the 1970s. To do this, it did not hesitate to use tactics brutal, making massive and indiscriminate use of aerial bombardments.

At the end of 2016, this support enabled the recapture of the city of Aleppo, at the cost of tens of thousands of civilians killed and the destruction of the city. Many Ukrainians will make the link between the martyrdom of Aleppo and that of Mariupol in the weeks following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Not without irony, Russian impasse in Ukraine will probably have contributed to the downfall of the Syrian regime, by preventing Moscow from reacting with more vigor. “ Because of the war in Ukraine, Russia did not have the capacity to quickly send reinforcements in the form of planes, pilots and regular troops or mercenaries when armed groups began to threaten Aleppodeclares Anna Matveeva, specialist in Russia’s action in Syria. The fact that they did not see the threat coming also suggests that Russian intelligence services were too busy with Ukraine and the West to follow what was happening elsewhere. »

As such, the fall of the Al Assad House offers a further demonstration of how the invasion of Ukraine has weakened Russian interests in various regions of the world: in Central Asia, where the former Soviet republics are seeking alternative support points; in the South Caucasus, where Moscow stood out for its passivity in the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis; and now in the Middle East.

Bases of strategic importance

Because if it is too early to say what Russia’s place will be in post-Assad Syria, it is certain that the fall of the regime endangers a key military-strategic device for Moscow. No one knows if Russia will be able to keep its Hmeimim air base, opened in 2015, and especially its Tartous naval base, of great importance for its projection capacity in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and as far as Africa. “ There is no good alternative to link Russian operations in Africa », Writes the Russia-Africa Monitor newsletter, devoted to Russian activities on the continent.

« The question now is whether the Russians will be able to reach an agreement with the forces that will take power.affirms Anna Matveeva. It is on this point that they will focus their diplomatic efforts, to see what conditions would allow them to stay. »

Russian diplomacy is surely already hard at work: in a press release published on Sunday December 8, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it was in contact with “ all Syrian opposition groups ».