Syria and Russia have spent the past 18 months negotiating the fate of Moscow’s military presence in Syria following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024. On Sunday, at least part of that question seemed to be settled after the post-Assad government in Damascus announced a memorandum of understanding regarding the future of Russian military assets in the country.
Russia was a major Assad ally during Syria’s near 14-year civil war, which began with Arab Spring protests in 2011 and ended when the current President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, led a lightning strike on Damascus and toppled the regime. Under the new accord, Syria will take control of civilian facilities at the Hmeimim airbase and the commercial section of Tartus port.
The military facilities will be transformed into joint Russian-Syrian training and qualification centres, with the transition expected to be completed within three months. It marks a significant shift from the role both bases once played in service of al-Assad during the civil war, which killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and displaced millions.
However, analysts say it could represent something more pragmatic, with Damascus reclaiming greater sovereignty over strategically important facilities while Moscow preserves a foothold and avoids being pushed entirely out of a country in which it has invested heavily for decades.
“The agreement between Russia and the Syrian government indicates that both countries need each other,” Alexey Muraviev, a senior research fellow in defence and strategic studies at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, told Al Jazeera. He added that Damascus is not interested in terminating its prolonged relationship with Russia entirely.
Moscow was a key Assad ally during Syria’s civil war, helping to keep the former leader in power by providing vital military support. The Russian military intervention in 2015 helped to turn the tide of the war in favour of the al-Assad-led government, with Hmeimim becoming the centre of Russian air operations.
However, Russia did not interfere during the major advance towards Damascus that led to al-Assad’s overthrow in December 2024. Following Assad’s ousting, Russian troops still in Syria gradually left the country, except for those stationed at the two bases.
The Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement that the new arrangements for the bases represent a “reorganising of the Russian presence” along Syria’s coast. According to political analyst Ruslan Trad, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, Damascus has already moved on from Russia’s role in the war.
“Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s government fought al-Assad’s Russian-backed forces for years, yet within weeks of taking power, it began quiet negotiations to keep Moscow present rather than expel it,” Trad told Al Jazeera. “This confirms the classic realist maxim that in politics there are no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”
In the same vein in which al-Sharaa has gone in efforts to strike cordial relations with Western powers such as the US – which bestowed him with the status of Specially Designated Global Terrorist in May 2013 during the civil war – Trad said the post-al-Assad government has likely calculated that punishing Russia for its wartime role would cost more than it was worth. “It would be very painful for Syria to break that relationship completely,” he told Al Jazeera.
Since the fall of al-Assad, Western and regional actors have sought to use Syria’s political transition to curb Russian influence, said Muraviev. “Clearly, there was an attempt by the US and, to some extent, perhaps, the Israelis to push the new Syrian regime to terminate Russia’s presence in Syria,” he said. The prolonged negotiations between Damascus and Moscow were themselves telling, he added, noting that the fact they lasted a year and a half meant both sides were committed to a resolution.
Nevertheless, Muraviev stressed that keeping Russia in the picture does not mean Syria will close off avenues to other powers. “The new government would be open to develop strategic links with the US, Turkey, even working with Israel,” he said. Aron Lund, a researcher, noted that negotiations have been “very discreet,” perhaps because Russia and Syria appear to have been concerned that talking too much about the bases could trigger US and European demands for their closure.
“Al-Sharaa’s government, chronically cash-strapped and needing wheat, energy and technical support, has visited Putin twice in Moscow since taking power.”
To this end, Al-Sharaa’s government, “chronically cash-strapped and needing wheat, energy and technical support”, says Trad, has visited Putin twice in Moscow since taking power.
The Syrian president has taken pains to publicly acknowledge Russia’s role “in stabilising the situation, not only in Syria but also in the region”.
Assad fled to Russia where he and his family were granted asylum.
“Moscow controls Bashar al-Assad’s asylum, holds Syrian debt and reconstruction contracts, supplies subsidised oil and grain and remains a veto-wielding Security Council power that shielded Sharaa’s own past terrorism designation,” he added.
In fact, the first agreements were made even before Assad fell, during the offensive that toppled his regime,” he said.
Putin has welcomed al-Sharaa and signalled support for Syria’s territorial integrity.
Moscow, Trad said, needed to preserve its “only Mediterranean military platform for projecting power into Africa and the eastern Mediterranean”, while offering “debt relief, economic cooperation and UN cover on terrorism designations in exchange”.
“But … an agreement means that the Syrian government has retained an interest, and withstood the pressure from other parties, because they clearly see the dividends of maintaining the relationship with Russia.”
“But they would probably want to keep a multi-vectoral engagement … and having Russia in the equation will help them to use it as perhaps even a bargaining chip in their power game with other major powers.”
We shall see whether the new arrangement will constrain Russia even more, or, to the contrary, whether this deal will formalise and reactivate Russia’s military presence.”