Syrian Rout Threatens Humiliating 'Saigon Moment' For Russia

As Syrian forces advance on the last major city between them and Damascus, Russia and Iran have begun evacuating their military, diplomatic and commercial personnel. Syrian president Assad's wife and family have reportedly already fled the country. 

Should the rebels take Damascus, it will signal a humiliating 'Saigon moment' for the Kremlin in which a country supposedly well supplied and backed militarily by Russia falls to a ragtag collection of rebel groups. This reinforces the image from three years of war in Ukraine, that the Russian army, navy and air force - as well as the weapons they use - are less fearsome than once believed. And the loss of Syria will also undermine Putin's attempts to claim a dominant position in Ukraine. JL

Sune Rasmussen and Thomas Grove report in the Wall Street Journal:

A  rebel offensive in Syria threatens to dislodge Russia from a country that Moscow has used to project power in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean and into Africa. It also challenges Putin’s efforts to portray Moscow as a flag bearer for an alternative global order. “To see Russian planes leave Syria as rebel forces move towards their air bases, and their assets in Damascus fall, this is devastating for the Russian image of itself. It is akin to a Saigon moment for them. Losing Syria would be a strategic defeat that would reverberate beyond the Middle East and have global repercussions. Russia seemed to always think it was superior to Iran but finds itself a lot more reliant on them now,” 

A fast-advancing rebel offensive in Syria threatens to dislodge Russia from a strategic linchpin that Moscow has used for a decade to project power in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean and into the African continent. 

It also challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to portray Moscow as a flag bearer for an alternative global order to rival Western liberalism, and his defense of the Syrian regime as evidence of successful pushback against American dominance in the region.

A coalition of Syrian rebels launched a surprise offensive last week, reigniting a dormant civil war and seizing significant swaths of territory in Syria, which hosts important Russian air and naval bases. The rebels have already taken the cities of Aleppo and Hama and are now closing in on Homs.

The Russian air force has been supporting Syrian government forces by carrying out airstrikes on rebel positions. The Russian military also plans to carry out naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, Russian state news agency TASS said.

Antigovernment fighters rolled into Hama, Syria, this week. Photo: Bakr Al Kassem/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al-Assad against an armed uprising prompted by the Arab Spring, giving it a role as an influential foreign power in the Middle East. It sought to leverage its relations with rival powers such as Iran and Israel, as well as Turkey and Gulf states, to mediate conflicts and claim status as a regional power broker.

Moscow co-sponsored peace talks with Tehran and Ankara to try to end the Syrian war. At Israel’s request, it agreed to hold Iranian and Iranian-backed forces away from Syria’s border with Israel. 

Syria has partly been an ideological project for Putin. The intervention in Syria became a way for Russia to extend its vision of a multipolar world opposed to the Western liberal order, said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a coming book on Russia’s relationship with Iran, including in Syria.

Turkey

Aleppo

Khmeimim Air Base

Hama

Tartus Naval Base

Mediterranean Sea

Syria

Lebanon

Damascus

golan

heights

Isr.

West

Bank

jordan

Carl Churchill/WSJ

“To see Russian planes leave Syria as rebel forces move onward towards their air bases, and their assets in Damascus fall, this would be so devastating for the Russian image of itself,” she said. “It would be akin to a Saigon moment for them.”

Putin’s assistance was instrumental to Assad’s survival, and showed Moscow’s allies far beyond the Middle East that Russian intervention could help push back popular uprisings, said a former Russian official. African leaders began to invite Russia, and specifically contractors from the Wagner paramilitary group who also played a critical role in Syria, to help stabilize their regimes. 

Syria holds significant strategic value for Russia as well. The Khmeimim air base near the coastal city of Latakia serves as a logistical hub for flights to Libya, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where Russian private contractors and soldiers have operated for years. 

A naval base in the port city of Tartus serves as the only replenishment and repair point for the Russian navy in the Mediterranean, where it has brought in goods by bulk through the Black Sea. Tartus has granted Putin access to a warm water port, something Russian rulers for centuries before him sought in the Middle East. The port could also potentially connect Russia to Libya—like Syria, a Soviet-era ally—where it seeks a naval base to extend its reach into sub-Saharan Africa. A rebel takeover of those Syrian coastal positions could jeopardize Russia’s global-power projection. 

Russia’s naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus serves is a critical regional port for the Russian navy. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Syria provided so many advantages at a low cost,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank and author of a book on Putin’s war in Syria. “Losing Syria would be a big strategic defeat that would reverberate beyond the Middle East. It would have global repercussions.”

Yet, despite Russia’s intervention, Putin wasn’t able to force Assad to a political compromise with swaths of the country, leaving him vulnerable to another round of violence, said Mikhail Barabanov, senior researcher at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defense think tank.

Now with Russia invested fully in Ukraine, he said, Moscow would be unlikely to provide more than a symbolic show of support.

 

“Several airstrikes and cruise missile attacks a day will not fundamentally affect the situation,” said Barabanov. “All the players in Syria understand the Kremlin’s deep involvement in Ukraine and have become convinced of the limits of Russian military power.” Russia’s initial success in Syria, secured with ferocious air power, also fed into its calculations in Ukraine by inflating the Kremlin’s confidence in its military power and contributing to the failures seen in the initial year of its invasion of Ukraine, said a person close to the Russian defense establishment. 

The Russian foreign ministry and the Kremlin didn’t respond to requests for comment. On Wednesday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova condemned the attacks by the rebels, labeling them terrorists and accusing them of cooperating with Ukrainian special forces. She reaffirmed Russian support for the Assad government. 

The Middle East has long been a cornerstone of Russia’s great power competition with the West. During the Cold War, Russia aligned with Syria, supplying it with arms and supporting it in wars against Israel.

After the end of the Cold War, in the late 1990s, Putin sought to resurrect the policy and rebuild Moscow’s Soviet-era ties in the region, deepening diplomatic and economic relations with Syria as well as Iraq and Libya. It broadened energy and nuclear cooperation with Iran, and exported arms to Tehran and Damascus.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023. Photo: Sergei Guneyev/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

When Putin intervened in Syria in 2015, he joined a centuries-old lineage of Russian rulers harking back to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, who also sought to use the region to expand Russia’s geopolitical and economic power. 

And like rulers before him, Putin has seen his campaign in the Middle East strained by pressing military demands closer to home, in Ukraine.

“One way to see Putin’s ambition in Syria is as part of his larger imperial vision,” said Borshchevskaya. “That’s what Ukraine is, that’s what [the invasion of] Georgia was in 2008, and to some extent that’s what Syria was,” she said. “Now in 2024, Russia finally finds itself overstretched.”

Russia’s involvement in Syria also transformed its relationship with one of Washington’s chief foes, Iran, which supported Assad from the beginning of the uprising. Despite pressure from the U.S. and Israel to curb Iranian influence in the region, including potentially in coming negotiations over a settlement in Ukraine, Moscow’s relationship with Tehran is likely to endure, analysts say, especially if the rebel offensive continues. 

The Russian intervention in the civil war turned the tide in Assad’s favor and helped Iran consolidate its military foothold all the way to the Israeli border. Western attempts to isolate Moscow and Tehran through sanctions have pushed them closer together. 

During the early years of the Syrian civil war, Russia was the world’s second-largest arms exporter, with Iran a major recipient. Tehran has long been in talks about purchasing two Russian Su-35 jet fighter squadrons alongside radar and air-defense systems to supplement at least four existing S-300 missile systems that were damaged in recent Israeli airstrikes in Iran. 

 

In return, Iran has provided Shahed attack drones for Russian use in Ukraine, becoming one of the few countries to publicly side with Moscow in its onslaught against Ukrainians. 

While Russia has often regarded itself as the senior partner in the relationship, the rekindled Syrian war has reminded the Kremlin of Iran’s usefulness, analysts say. Repelling the Syrian rebel offensive will require mobilizing ground forces, such as Iranian-backed militias and Revolutionary Guard officers—rather than just airstrikes—which will make Moscow more dependent on Tehran, Grajewski said.

“Russia seemed to always think that it was superior to Iran, and I think it might find itself a lot more reliant on them now,” she said.