‘They need each other’: What’s behind the new Syria-Russia accord? 

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 Moscow’s Hmeimim airbase and Tartus naval base.

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. Assad fled to Russia where he and his family were granted asylum.

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. Moscow has yet to comment on the deal.

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, senior research fellow in defence and strategic studies at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, told Al Jazeera, adding that Damascus is likely “not interested in terminating its prolonged relationship with Russia”.

Russia’s military foothold in Syria

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. Hmeimim became the centre of Russian air operations, while Tartus provided Moscow with its principal naval foothold in the Mediterranean.

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.

“This move marks the most significant development since negotiations began approximately a year and a half ago, paving the way for a new phase in Syrian-Russian relations,” the statement read.

‘No permanent enemies, only permanent interests’

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.

“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.

Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, said there is “lots of military and civilian technology” in Syria that comes from Russia and the former Soviet Union.

“There is an old legacy of military, administrative and technical cooperation between Damascus and Moscow. It would be very painful for Syria to break that relationship completely,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It’s transactional pragmatism on both sides,” he told Al Jazeera. “Al-Sharaa’s government, chronically cash-strapped and needing wheat, energy and technical support, has visited Putin twice in Moscow since taking power.”

“The leaders of both Syria and Russia have proven themselves to be very flexible and pragmatic.” Lund said.

That is reflected in the fact that the two sides began meeting and negotiating even before the toppling of the al-Assad regime was complete, he added.

“They began to meet only some weeks after Assad’s ouster. In practice, they were meeting and negotiating just weeks after Russian jets bombed al-Sharaa’s fighters. In fact, the first agreements were made even before Assad fell, during the offensive that toppled his regime,” he said.

Sovereign gatekeeper, not ‘Moscow client’

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”.

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”.

“So yes, both sides still need each other, just on renegotiated terms that reflect Syria’s new leverage as sovereign gatekeeper rather than as Moscow’s client,” he added.

Resisting or balancing Western meddling?

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.

“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.”

The prolonged negotiations between Damascus and Moscow were themselves telling, he said.

“The fact that those negotiations were held for about a year and a half meant that both sides were interested in not seeing these negotiations collapse,” he added.

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.

“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.”

Lund 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-Assad’s fall was a major blow to Russia, but that has already happened. This agreement is about the post-Assad future, and it could be positive or negative for Russia. 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.”