“Everyone has been asking questions since the events in Syria”

Since the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime on December 8, Russia has worked to preserve what is essential in Syria. Two sites are at stake in the negotiations initiated with the new masters of Damascus, the former Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTC): the Tartous maritime base and the Hmeimim airport. Deployed in Syria since 2015, the Russian army has used these two bases, 60 kilometers apart, as logistical support points for its operations in the Sahel, while its aging wide-body aircraft do not have the sufficient autonomy to fly, non-stop, from Russia to Libya.

In the event of expulsion from Syria, the Russian army has thus regrouped over the last ten days all its assets scattered across nearly twenty bases and almost a hundred posts. Large convoys of trucks and armored vehicles were seen converging on the Mediterranean coast, once an Alawite stronghold, the religious minority to which the Al-Assad clan belongs. The fact that this vast logistical operation was able to take place without notable incident proves the existence of coordination between the Russian general staff and HTC, which was nevertheless for nine years the target of the former’s bombings.

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