Vladimir Putin would have done without this blitzkrieg lesson. He who dreamed of taking kyiv in forty-eight hours in a lightning “special military operation” has just witnessed, stunned, the rush towards Damascus of rebels that his army did everything to quell in Syria for a decade. Weary! The insurgents ended up debunking his protégé, Bashar al-Assad, putting an end, in twelve days, to a 53-year-old dictatorship.
Failing to have prevented the fall of the “Butcher of Damascus”, the head of the Kremlin offered him asylum in Moscow, not far from another deposed president: the Ukrainian Viktor Yanukovych, dismissed by Parliament on February 22 2014, under pressure from the street. This is what Vladimir Putin’s “dear friends” can hope for. There is no doubt that its other client states view the disgrace of “Bachar” with a touch of apprehension.
“In 2015, the Russian intervention in Syria symbolized the return of Russian power to the Middle East, underlines Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean, director of the Russia-Eurasia Center at the French Institute of International Relations. Vladimir Putin then sent a message to the entire global South: ally yourself with Russia and your regime will be safe.” Message received 5 out of 5 by a slew of African leaders in need of legitimacy, lured by the promise of this “Russian shield”. In 2017, the Sudanese dictator Omar el-Bechir allowed himself to be seduced, soon imitated by the Central African president, threatened by a rebellion at the gates of Bangui. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will follow, three failed states captured by putschists, who also agreed to sell off the exploitation of gold mines and other resources in exchange for a praetorian guard and military reinforcement against rebel or jihadist factions.
Without its Syrian bases, Russian strategy amputated
To sell its services, Moscow has an unparalleled asset: two military bases located on the Syrian coast offering a unique strategic shortcut to Africa: the naval installation of Tartous, the jewel of the Russian army on the Mediterranean, heritage of the Soviet era, and the Hmeimim airfield, used since 2015. “The Hmeimim base is a crucial refueling point for flights transporting personnel or military equipment to the various deployments in Africa, explains Mark Galeotti, British historian specializing in Russia, author of Putin’s wars (Gramese, 2023). Without it, the only way for cargo planes to go from Russia to Africa is through Turkish airspace, which would give its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan full power to close this route whenever he wants. seems.”
If Putin has to save something in Syria, it is these two holds: Tartous and Hmeimim. And not just for its African ambitions. “Access to warm seas – free of ice all year round – is a raison d’être for ‘Great Russia’, recalls a French military source. However, Turkey closed its straits to military vessels after the invasion of Ukraine. Russian ships therefore no longer have access to the Black Sea. Losing Tartous would be a huge strategic setback. The Russian navy would only have the ports of Saint Petersburg and Murmansk left.” Not to mention the power of nuisance that these two outposts in the Mediterranean offer to Moscow. “Before, the Mediterranean was a friendly space, continues this source. If a threat arrived, it was tracked at the two entry points: Gibraltar or Suez. The Tartous naval base has introduced a new competitor into this theater, forcing us to constantly capture intelligence to gauge the degree of the threat.”
Make a pact with yesterday’s enemy
A sign of the strategic importance of these two bases, Moscow seems ready to do anything to keep control of them, including making a pact with yesterday’s enemy. This is evidenced by the radical change in tone towards the main rebel movement behind the fall of the Syrian regime, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTC). On December 7, twenty-four hours before the overthrow of the tyrant Assad, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov described the HTC fighters as “terrorists”, as did the pro-Kremlin media. The next day, however, the RIA Novosti and Tass news agencies preferred the term “armed opposition”. In the process, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov indicated that the authorities were taking all “necessary measures to establish contacts in Syria with those capable of ensuring the security of military bases.” Another Kremlin source tells Russian state media that Moscow has obtained guarantees from Syrian opposition leaders.
“An agreement between the Russians and HTC, negotiated through Turkey, cannot be ruled out, estimates Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean. If Vladimir Putin manages to preserve the leases of his bases signed in 2017 for forty-nine years , he will succeed in doing well.” “Vladimir For Putin, politics is the art of the possible, recalls Russian researcher Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the analysis firm R.Politik. He will always choose the option that is accessible to him at a given moment. “
The game is not yet over for Moscow. “Especially since the real loser in this affair is Iran, underlines Mark Galeotti. After the blows dealt to Lebanese Hezbollah, it loses its number 1 regional ally in the person of Bashar el-Assad. From the point from the Kremlin’s point of view, this is a good thing: Iran may well be an ally, but it is also a rival for influence in the Middle East. Therefore, seeing Tehran reduced to a bare minimum. less arrogant and confident, is rather good news for Moscow.”
Here is at least one, because the spectacular rout of the Assad clan, which took the whole world by surprise, including its Moscow godfather, reveals the flaws in its intelligence services. It also shows the limits of the “Putin system”. “Its capacity to react to ‘black swans’, these major and unpredictable events, is much less than in the past, before the large-scale invasion of February 2022, continues Mark Galeotti. For a simple reason: all its resources, military , financial and political are absorbed by the war in Ukraine. The system remains in a relatively strong and stable position… as long as it does not face unexpected, serious and unavoidable challenges. The accelerated fall of his dictator friend, however, sends a serious warning to Vladimir Putin, traumatized in 2011 by the fall of another traveling companion: Muammar Gaddafi.
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