Why Assad's Fall Humiliated Putin, Denting His Ukrainian and Global Ambitions

Putin sought to project an image of invincibility in global affairs. But the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, coming as his army's failure to prevail against Ukraine continues, has undercut that strong man reputation.

Russia propped up Assad even as it became clear his power had decayed. Putin now risks the same end in Ukraine, where he holds sway over smoking heaps of rubble reeking from the unburied corpses of his wasted hundreds of thousands of soldiers and burning armor. To save some face, he may pretend to stand up to Trump's coming cease fire demands, but no one can be more desperate to end this before it does him in than Putin. JL 

Robyn Dixon and colleagues report in the Washington Post:

Putin’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine resulted in the loss of Syria. Assad’s collapse revealed the limits of Russian military power. Russia poured in billions of dollars to preserve Assad. Ultimately it proved untenable. “This is a huge blow to Putin’s image in the eyes of leaders in the Middle East and Africa. Putin has shown he is no longer able to support his allies. He no longer has many stable resources." Russia focused on maintaining the rotten and ineffective status quo, protecting the decaying and delegitimized Assad regime, and unable to influence the growing dynamics of other forces.” Russia could repeat the mistake of staying too long with no clear victory, in Ukraine.

Russia is scrambling to save face after its humiliating loss of its client, dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the Kremlin has conceded preserving its crucial Syrian military bases will take time and delicate negotiations with groups it was calling “terrorists” just days ago.

 

In 2015, Russian President Putin made saving the Assad regime his personal project, intervening with a massive show of airpower to prevent his defeat by insurgents. Assad’s fall nine years later was a stunning blow to the main goal in Putin’s long rule — forging Russia into a great world power competing globally with the United States.

“The entire system of Russian presence in the Middle East, which was built over the past 10 years and in which very significant resources were invested, has in an instant turned into something from a political era that has faded into oblivion,” mourned Mikhail Rostovsky, writing in the pro-Kremlin newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. “This is a hurtful, unfortunate, even painful fact that cannot be denied or understated.”

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The regime’s swift collapse this week stunned the Kremlin, starkly demonstrating the limits of Russian global power, even as Putin is waging what he calls an existential fight against NATO in Ukraine.

“Apparently these events have surprised the entire world. We are not an exception,” admitted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday. Russian military bloggers bitterly attacked Assad for the loss of Syria, but Russian analysts argued that it was Putin’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine that resulted in the loss of focus on his Syria project.

Ruslan Suleymanov, research fellow at the Baku-based Institute for Development and Diplomacy, said Putin was determined to prove that Moscow never abandoned its allies, yet Assad’s fall sent the opposite message. The Russian leader, it seemed, “lost interest” in Syria after the Ukraine invasion.

 

“This is certainly a huge blow to Putin’s image in the eyes of other leaders in the Middle East and Africa,” he said. “Putin has shown everyone that he is no longer able to support his allies. He just doesn’t care. He no longer has many stable resources. He is busy doing something completely different.”

Russia’s recent failure to recognize the fragility of Assad’s military was also a new low in a series of disastrous intelligence failures that have discredited Russian intelligence agencies.

These included Russia’s failure to predict that Ukraine would strongly resist Russia’s 2022 invasion, or that Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin would stage a rebellion in 2023. It was unprepared when Islamic State terrorists attacked a concert venue on Moscow’s outskirts in March, even though the United States had shared intelligence warning of the attack and location. Nor did it foresee Ukraine’s August incursion in the Kursk region of southern Russia.

 

While it is too soon to write off Russia’s chances of clawing back its regional influence, for now Moscow’s urgent concern is the long-term future of two crucial military bases, the Tartus naval facility and Hmeimim air base — Moscow’s prized military foothold on NATO’s southern flank.

Russia secured agreement from the main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), not to attack the bases or Russian diplomats, Tass reported on Sunday quoting a Kremlin official. But Peskov admitted Monday that the long-term future of the bases was in question, saying that it would take time before Russia could “have a serious conversation with those in authority.”

As of Tuesday, Russian ships had left Tartus and were loitering around five miles from the port, according to satellite images. Russian planes are still present at the Hmeimim air base, and Russian forces are present in Syria, although their numbers and locations are not clear. Dara Massicot, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on X that it would take hundreds of sorties of heavy aircraft to evacuate its forces and equipment.

A satellite image shows the empty Russian Naval Base in Tartus, Syria on Tuesday. (Maxar Technologies/Reuters)

The bases, which have allowed Russia to project its military power in the eastern Mediterranean, have also served as a key logistics hub for Russia’s operations in Africa — another element of Putin’s ambition to expand Moscow’s global footprint, challenging U.S. influence on that continent.

 

“Putin will undoubtedly want to avoid the loss of Hmeimim and Tartus, but with the way things are going, I’d be very surprised if an HTS-led transitional body would be willing to allow Russian military bases to remain on Syrian soil,” said Charles Lister of the Middle Eastern Institute in written answers to questions from The Post. “Negotiating safe exits is one thing, but allowing the troops and aircraft that have bombed civilians for nearly a decade seems a step too far.”

That would require HTS leaders overlooking Russia’s nine years of violence against Syria’s population, and its role in prolonging the brutal rule of a president who jailed and killed thousands of people.

 

Russia, on its own count, had launched more than 100,000 bomb attacks in Syria by August 2021, and Russian military officials characterized the war as a kind of testing ground to showcase their military weapons and technology, to maximize weapons sales.

 

By June 2023, Russian attacks had killed 6,969 civilians, including 2,055 children, 1,094 women and 70 medical personnel at schools, markets and medical facilities, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

While HTS had previously condemned Russian airstrikes in its breakaway province of Idlib, the group has said nothing publicly about Moscow’s military presence in the country since taking control of Damascus.

The day before rebels toppled Assad’s regime, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov warned that it was “inadmissible” for HTS “terrorists” to take power. The same day, Russian news agency Tass reported that Russian and Syrian planes had bombed rebels in Homs province, “killing dozens of terrorists.”

Russia abruptly stopped calling HTS terrorists as of Sunday, after Assad’s fall. Lister said that like other players, Russia would have to deal with HTS.

 

Russia poured in billions of dollars to preserve Assad, creating a frozen conflict in Syria through the Astana format, a peace process involving Russia, Iran and Turkey that excluded the United States. Ultimately it proved untenable.

Assad’s collapse revealed the limits of Russian military power, said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based think tank, Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, writing in Kommersant newspaper.

Moscow never defeated Assad’s enemies “and this was a fundamental strategic failure, which was already clear years ago.” He warned that Russia could repeat the mistake of staying too long with no clear victory, in Ukraine.

An image of Bashar al Assad was broken and left in the ruins of the prison. After the end of Bashar al Assad rule all inmates were freed from the infamous Sednaya prison in Damascus, Syria. Family members are looking for the many people who disappeared in the security machine of the former regime. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Washington Post)

The Syria project was so dear to Putin that Russia failed to recognize that Syria’s hollowed out army, pervasive corruption, state brutality and dire social situation had undermined Assad and his regime.

 

Russia, wrote Pukov, “has increasingly fo

cused on maintaining the rotten and ineffective status quo there for the sake of the status quo, essentially protecting the decaying and delegitimized Assad regime without any prospects, and at the same time unable to influence the growing dynamics of other forces and players.”

 

A prominent military blogger and former Russian pilot in Syria with the handle Fighterbomber wrote on Telegram that he and others got wartime experience in Syria that equipped them to fight against Ukraine, although “too many” died there.

“Then, we were welcome and needed there. Today, no one there needs us. We need Syria today, but it doesn’t need us,” he wrote on Telegram, adding that, “we are losing the Middle East.”

Russia could not prevent Assad’s fall, said pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov, as his army abandoned the fight, “because it’s not possible to help an army that’s running. They can only help an army that’s fighting.”

 

After the Syrian army fled, a Russian soldier wandered around one of the deserted Syrian military bases, in video posted by open source analysts, musing at the hundreds of abandoned weapons and uniforms stripped off and scattered, including one belonging to a major.

“It’s all very sad,” he murmured mournfully. “Total incapacity, disorganization and loss of control. Very, very sad.”