Assad management

During talks with a delegation led by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Damascus earlier this week, Syria’s transitional government demanded that Russia, the sponsor of so much of the country’s suffering over the past decade, pay compensation for its role in keeping former dictator Bashar al-Assad in power, and made clear that any restoration of relations between the two countries “should take into account the mistakes of the past, respect the will of the Syrian people and serve their interests”.

Military analyst Sergey Auslender told Novaya Europe that it was reasonable to conclude that the negotiations had “so far not been successful”, based on what he called the streamlined language used in Russian state media coverage of the talks, not to mention the fact that the Russian side would likely have broadcast any progress made to the world immediately. “Apparently, the main condition being set by the Syrians is the extradition of Bashar al-Assad, and I assume that Russia has already decided not to agree to that,” Auslender adds. 

While Putin may decide to hide between the well-known Russian propaganda slogan “we don’t give up on our own”, the real reason he’s unlikely to repatriate Assad to Syria is his fear that the former Syrian dictator could be forced to reveal the truth about the extent of Russian war crimes in the Middle East when faced with a tribunal at which he will be questioned in detail about the indiscriminate Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Idlib, as well as the use of chemical weapons during the country’s civil war. 

“As far as I know, the new Syrian government is demanding the extradition of not one, but three Assads: Bashar, as well as his accomplices: his brother and his sister’s husband,” says military expert Sergey Migdal, who calls all three “blood-soaked criminals”.

However, for Russia to simply hand over an asset such as Assad, whose closeness to the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence services is well known, would undermine the confidence those who collaborate with the Kremlin around the world have in Putin’s famous loyalty code, Migdal stresses. That code, which in the past has led the Russian intelligence services to kidnap Western citizens if need be in order to ensure that key assets are eventually exchanged, underpins Putin’s worldwide network of agents and collaborators. 

In addition to the extradition of Assad, Syria’s interim government is also demanding reparations for the destruction caused by Russian forces fighting in the country. After all, it was Russian aviation that struck hospitals, schools, bridges and other civilian infrastructure, the cost of which will be in the hundreds of millions if not in the billions of dollars.

“Don’t forget that Assad has transferred his very considerable fortune to Russia,” Auslender says, though he admits that the exact size of the former dictator’s retirement fund is unknown. Nevertheless, Assad would have been expected to share a part of his “rainy day” fund with the Kremlin to pay for his permanent stay in the country, “just as happened to [former Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych and the other deposed presidents who ended up in Russia”, Auslender says. 

“The EU has issued a communiqué on normalising relations with Syria, in which one of the points, compliance with which is a prerequisite for EU aid to be allocated to Syria, is the expulsion of Russian bases from Syrian territory,” adds Migdal. “Only then will billions of dollars of financial assistance flow into the country”.

In 1971, Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez allowed the Soviet Navy to open a logistics point in the city of Tartus, thereby fulfilling a Russian ambition of having a naval base on the Mediterranean that dated back to the time of the tsars, and allowing Moscow to station a squadron or even an entire strike group here. 

“The logistics point in Tartus makes it possible to service warships on long-distance missions,” Pavel Aksyonov, a military analyst for BBC News Russian, tells Novaya Europe. It was through Tartus that the so-called Syrian Express, the fleet of Russian vessels delivering weapons and personnel to Syria, operated, and, as such, the presence of Russian troops in the region is dependent on the base.

Syria was also used by the Russian military as a staging post to supply its lucrative deployment of mercenaries to countries in Africa, according to Aksyonov, who notes the length of the runway at the Hmeimim air base, which allows it to receive heavy Russian military transport aircraft, which are too big for most runways. 

The Hmeimim air base is even more of an issue for the Russians today than the naval base at Tartus, according to Auslender, who says that there were between 7,000–8,000 Russian military personnel in Syria at the time of Assad’s overthrow, even if most of them were technical personnel, but that number has been significantly reduced and the number of Russian military personnel in Syria may have dropped to the hundreds. 

“During the offensive, the rebels were able to reach the Hmeimim air base quite quickly,” says Auslender. “And such facilities, with their kilometres-long perimeters, isolated in the vastness of the desert, are very challenging to secure. Perhaps now the Turks will take over, or the new government will come up with another way to use the base.”

Never a country that can be accused of putting all its eggs in one basket, Russia is currently rumoured to be simultaneously negotiating the establishment of a military base in the Libyan city of Benghazi, according to Migdal. 

According to Flightradar, Russian planes have begun to fly through Benghazi on a regular basis, and even though Libya is gripped by instability, unrest and civil war, meaning that ensuring the security of an air base, aircraft, cargo or personnel would be a huge logistical challenge, starting over with a fresh slate and a new set of allies must hold significant appeal for the Russian military, whose top brass may well decide it’s now time to move on from Syria.