Al-Sharaa meets Putin as Russia seeks to secure military bases in Syria

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Kremlin has not indicated whether it will agree to al-Sharaa’s repeated requests for Bashar al-Assad’s extradition.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is meeting Vladimir Putin in Moscow as the latter seeks to shore up Russia’s presence in the country, including militarily, just over a year after al-Sharaa ousted Russia’s former ally, Bashar al-Assad at the end of 2024.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of their meeting on Wednesday, al-Sharaa thanked the Russian president for supporting unity in Syria, and what he said was the “historic” role Russia had played in the “stability of the region”.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 3US president praises Syrian leader al-Sharaa after offensive against SDF
• list 2 of 3Syrian army offensive overjoys some, leaves others with ‘existential’ fear
• list 3 of 3Syrian army, Kurdish-led SDF accuse each other of ceasefire violations

Putin expressed his support for al-Sharaa’s ongoing efforts to stabilise Syria and congratulated him on gaining momentum towards “restoring the territorial integrity of Syria”.

Putin and al-Sharaa spent more than a decade on opposing sides of Syria’s civil war, prompting concerns in Moscow about the future of Russia’s military presence there.

Ahead of the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the “the presence of our soldiers in Syria” would be discussed, who are stationed at the Hmeimim airbase and the Tartus naval base in Syria’s Mediterranean coastal region.

Earlier this week, Russia reportedly withdrew its forces from the Qamishli airport in Kurdish-held northeast Syria, leaving it with only its two Mediterranean bases – now its only military outposts outside the former Soviet Union.

Amberin Zaman, a correspondent with the Middle East news outlet Al Monitor, published footage which she was said was from the abandoned base in Qamishli on Monday.

Syria had historically been one of Moscow’s closest regional allies with ties going back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union provided extensive military and other types of support to the Baathist regime in Damascus.

Moscow had been worried about the possibility of an “populist anti-Russia” government emerging in Damascus when Assad was overthrown, Samuel Ramani, an associated fellow at the London-based RUSI thinktank told Al Jazeera.

“They feared he would squeeze them out, but the Russians have been pleasantly surprised, even if they’ve had to downgrade their ties from before,” Ramani added.

Pragmatic approach

Al-Sharaa has also taken a pragmatic approach, said Ramani, as he has sought to build his own relations with extra-regional powers as a hedge against possible political swings in the US.

“The Republicans are lenient towards Syria engaging Russia as long as they keep Iran out,” Ramani said, “whereas the Democrats have been more sceptical overall and have wanted to move slower on the removal of sanctions and other issues.”

“Al-Sharaa also needs Russia, and that is why he is engaging”, he said.

Al-Sharaa played down Russia’s role in Syria’s civil war and sought to strike a friendlier tone during his first visit to Moscow in October, despite Russia providing refuge to Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, who fled the country as opposition fighters advanced towards Damascus in December 2024.

Al-Sharaa has requested al-Assad’s extradition and said at an event last month that there would be justice for Syrians who were victims of the former president’s repression.

Putin will be especially keen to maintain his country’s presence in Syria, having lost another ally this month, when the United States sent special forces to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defence minister Andrey Removich Belousov said after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart that Moscow was closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela and with Iran, which has close ties with Russia and has been facing threats of a strike from the US in recent weeks.

Syria’s new leaders have reorientated the country’s foreign policy away from Russia and have said they’re seeking to build a strategic relationship with the US, which has been reciprocated by the Trump administration.

The US appeared not to follow through with warnings to the Syrian government against engaging the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces this month, but later helped broker a truce which helped end the fighting.

A fragile ceasefire is now in place and has been largely holding.