It only took 11 days to demolish the authoritarian and violent regime imposed for more than half a century by the al-Assad family in Syria. A rapid fall accelerated largely by the weakening of Bashar al-Assad’s main allies, starting with Russia, which, while having indirectly favored this abrupt end, could emerge even more weakened on the international scene.
It is a “strategic political defeat for Moscow” which now plunges “the Kremlin into a crisis”, noted the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) the day after the Syrian dictator’s flight to Russia. The collapse of the “Butcher of Damascus” regime represents a huge geopolitical loss for the Kremlin strongman who, since 2015, had made Syria the outpost of his strategy aimed at rebuilding and reaffirming Russian influence. on the international scene, from the Middle East.
By allowing Bashar al-Assad to remain in power in the face of his people who had demanded the departure of the tyrant in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, Vladimir Putin sought to do much more than stem another “color revolution”. With their calls for freedom and democracy, these movements are indeed considered, even today, as an existential threat to its own regime.
However, Putin had above all succeeded for nine years in imposing his presence in this strategic region of the globe, by amplifying his military footprint on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. This allowed it to project its diplomatic power towards Africa and strengthen its protections against the threat from NATO that it sees coming towards it from the South.
And then, in 2022, Ukraine came to confuse the equation.
Russia’s attack on the former Soviet republic certainly contributed to the fall of the Syrian regime, which was then placed second in the Kremlin’s geostrategic priorities due to its difficulties encountered in Ukraine. Moscow would also have informed President Bashar al-Assad a few days ago, Sky News Arabia reported, citing a “well-informed source”.
Faced with growing opposition to his regime, the Kremlin reportedly only promised him “limited assistance”. And this is also what he did by protecting the dictator who became, with his family, “humanitarian refugees” in Moscow, but by not saving his dictatorship.
Revolution without resistance
“Syria’s main allies had their hands tied behind their backs,” summarized Boris Rozhin, a Russian military blogger on the Telegram network last week to explain this rapid fall of the Syrian regime. He mentioned in passing the weakening of Iran, behind the former regime in Damascus, which has lost its feathers in the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza, after this offensive had relaunched for a year the confrontation between the Hebrew State and Hezbollah, supported by Tehran.
It is no coincidence that the Syrian opposition offensive against Bashar al-Assad began on November 27, the day a truce between Israel and Hezbollah, a military group considered by the Syrian opposition as one of the obstacles, until today, to its attempt to overthrow the dictatorship. It’s no coincidence either that it occurred a few weeks before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, who intends to force Vladimir Putin to negotiate peace with Ukraine.
-In this perspective, the Russian dictator perhaps no longer has the means to maintain a heavy military presence in Syria and has preferred to concentrate all his forces on the Ukrainian front, in order to make the most territorial gains there. possible before the start of talks.
The strategy necessarily reduced the risks of armed resistance from the Syrian regime, which opened a breach into which oppositions were able to rush more easily than in the past.
“The events in Syria resemble a total surrender of territories without combat, and the terrorists obtain everything: equipment, weapons, ammunition and food,” lamented, a few days ago, the Russian military blog close to the nationalist movements called “Secrets of chancery” on Telegram.
Change of tone
On Sunday, a sign of Russia’s abandonment of Bashar al-Assad began to fly above the Syrian embassy in Moscow, where the “flag of the Syrian revolution” replaced that of the Ba’athist regime, for the first time since this party came to power 61 years ago.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has also changed its language to describe the new elements of power establishing themselves in Syria and now described as “opposition groups” to al-Assad’s armies. Last Saturday, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, described Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTC), a radical Islamist group and leader of the insurgency, as “terrorist” during his visit to Doha, Qatar.
This change of tone accompanies Moscow’s attempt to secure its military bases in Syria with its new interlocutors, to give itself time to evacuate human and material resources, indicates the ISW, citing Russian military sources.
In recent days, the Russian military has launched maneuvers from its Khmeimim air base and the port of Tartous, a pretext for withdrawing weapons and equipment from Syrian territory.
The fall of Bashar al-Assad now places Syria facing a risk of fragmentation of the political and social forces present, as well as the possibility for the Islamic State group to rebuild there, uncertainty still hovered Monday over the future of the country rid of its dictator. For the ISW, however, this collapse comes with one certainty: “Russia’s inability or decision not to strengthen the Assad regime will undermine Russia’s credibility as a reliable security partner.” and effective throughout the world, which will in turn affect the capacity of [Vladimir] Putin to obtain support in building the multipolar world he dreams of.”
