Russian forces remain at key military bases in Syria

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Russia is withdrawing its forces from smaller outposts in Syria following the overthrow of ally Bashar al-Assad by Islamist rebels, but is holding on to major naval and air bases it uses as staging points to the Mediterranean and Africa, according to show satellite images. .

As of Tuesday, there were no signs of a Russian withdrawal from the Tartus naval base or the Hmeimim air base near Latakia, both on Syria’s western coast.

These bases were instrumental in allowing the Kremlin to support the now-fallen Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, but also served as a key logistical bridge for Russia to the south.

Losing bases in Syria could cost Russia a permanent navy presence in the Mediterranean as well as a staging point for operations in Africa, said Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Ilyushin Il-76, Russia’s main Soviet-era heavy transport aircraft, has a flight range of 4,200 km with a medium load. Without access to a Syrian base, Russian forces would need to use one or possibly several more airfields to conduct remote operations.

“Obviously, Russia would like to maintain at least a symbolic presence at these bases, so its defeat does not seem so obvious. But whether that happens or not depends on how the political process in Syria develops,” Luzin said.

The Kremlin has said the future of its bases in Syria will depend on negotiations with new authorities following the overthrow of Moscow’s client Assad, who fled the country and was granted asylum in Russia by President Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s overwhelming focus on his invasion of Ukraine has already diminished Russia’s capabilities in Syria, leading some prominent hardline voices to grudgingly accept Moscow’s loss of influence in the region.

“What are you going to do, pull your hair out?” Andrei Medvedev, a well-known presenter on Russian state television, wrote on the social media app Telegram. “Obviously, if we lose the bases in Syria, we lose Africa. It will be almost impossible to transport cargo by plane to the CAR (Central African Republic) or Mali. . . Well, we will develop Siberia instead.”

While satellite imagery and transponder traffic reveal heavy aircraft traffic toward Hmeimim over the past week, analysts say the pace of arrivals and departures is not consistent with a rushed departure. No ship has yet arrived in Tartus to allow the maritime evacuation of equipment or personnel.

“Strong indicators of change are how many Ilyushins and Antonovs are passing. And if they have to abandon Tartus, we’ll actually see more ships show up to help get things out,” said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “If an evacuation occurred, we would know.”

Satellite images revealed on Monday that two Russian frigates, a submarine and a support ship, previously photographed in the port of Tartus on December 6, had departed. But photographs from Planet Labs and NASA show vessels of the same size maintaining positions between 8 and 10 kilometers from the coast.

A vessel similar in size to one of the frigates is visible in a similar location in a photograph obscured by clouds taken by the European Space Agency on Tuesday morning.

“The Russians don’t want to be attacked, so they take them out to loiter at sea,” Massicot said, noting that the ships had been moved out of range of mortar fire.

If Russia decided to evacuate its naval presence, the Turkish government would likely prohibit ships from crossing to the Black Sea via the Bosphorus. In that case, the closest Russian base would be Kaliningrad in the Baltic, a long sea journey that involves refueling on a route surrounded by NATO countries.

Cartography by Steven Bernard