The walls of the military office in Aleppo were adorned with pictures of the Kremlin, flanked by Russian and Syrian flags hanging side by side. On the desks, documents detailing the cooperation between the two nations lay abandoned – telltale signs of Bashar al-Assad’s forces’ hasty retreat as rebels closed in on Syria’s second-biggest city over the weekend.
The short clip circulating online was recorded in the office of Russian advisers at Aleppo’s military academy after it was taken by rebels in a surprise offensive. It highlights the escalating threat to the Assad regime and, by extension, to Moscow’s strategic foothold in Syria and the broader region.
Aleppo was the scene of fierce and destructive fighting between 2012 and 2016 when the Syrian civil war was at its height. In 2016, a year after Russian forces joined Assad’s side, the Syrian leader was able to retake the city, forcing the rebels to flee.
At the time, Assad’s capture of Aleppo, after months of relentless aerial bombardment, was widely celebrated in Moscow, with the country’s elite eager to claim credit for the military success.
“There is no question that liberating Aleppo from radical groups … was done with the direct involvement and even a decisive influence of our service personnel,” Vladimir Putin told his defence minister just days after Aleppo fell.
But as Assad’s position becomes more vulnerable, Moscow’s initial success in propping him up, which earned it prestige as a trusted ally, now risks being tarnished.
“The rapid fall of Aleppo and the sheer scale of the offensive that we’ve seen is definitely a reputational blow to Russia,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based expert on Russian foreign policy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015 marked the launch of a more assertive foreign policy, with Putin signalling to the west that Russia was reclaiming its place as a dominant player on the global stage.
This was Russia’s first prolonged military campaign abroad since its debacle in Afghanistan 35 years earlier, and its involvement in Syria reshaped a conflict that had been stalemated for years.
At grave cost to Syrian civilian lives, Russia’s airpower delivered momentum to Assad and his allies, pushing US-backed rebels into retreat. It proved to be a gamechanger for Assad, a longtime Russian patron, accelerating his efforts to regain control of all of Syria’s territory.
The intervention allowed Putin to claim the great power status he had sought since coming to power in 2000, securing Russia a seat at the table in the Middle East – and leaving him hungry for more.
“The Syrian intervention was important for Russia and its sense of place on the world stage. It took place under the banner of Russia’s return as a great power which was constantly emphasised,” said Nikita Smagin, an expert on Russian foreign policy in the Middle East.
“It changed not only the dynamics in the Middle East but also changed the perception of the Russian elite,” he added.
Syria became a testing ground for Putin’s use of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his paramilitary Wagner group, which not only participated in ground operations but also forged business ties with the Syrian elite. This strategy allowed Moscow to minimise its own military involvement and casualties in the conflict.
The same playbook – where Putin used a range of political, military and economic tools to prop up local strongmen – was later implemented in nearly a dozen African nations, from Mozambique to Libya.
When Russia shifted its military focus and resources to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin sought to preserve the status quo in Syria with minimal effort and investment, said Notte.
“Russia thought that the situation could be maintained. That has now been proven wrong,” she added.
While Russia’s military presence in Syria rarely exceeded 5,000 troops, its failures in Ukraine forced Moscow to redeploy some of its hardware based in Syria, including a squadron of Su-25 fighter jets and an S-300 long-range missile system.
And following Prigozhin’s demise in the summer of 2023, up to 2,000 battle-hardened mercenaries were also transferred out of Syria, some joining the African Legion, a unit closely aligned with Russia’s defence ministry.
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But Notte said the biggest shift for the Syrian leader’s fortunes came after 7 October 2023, when Israel significantly escalated its attacks on Assad’s allies in the region, including Iran-backed militants in Syria and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
The rebels’ offensive late last week came at a time when Iran had been weakened by Israeli airstrikes, while its proxy Hezbollah is severely diminished after 13 months of war with Israel and the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
“Russia had a presence that is suitable for maintaining a situation in Syria that doesn’t involve a lot of hot fighting, but it doesn’t have a presence needed to deal with a sudden, massive offensive,” said Notte.
“The post-7 October environment has been highly destabilising and is now causing problems for Moscow,” Notte said.
Russia’s options next are limited, observers believe.
The Kremlin has already stepped up its deadly airstrikes on a series of cities, including Aleppo and the north-western city of Idlib, a stronghold of the rebels. Moscow’s two large military bases, the Khmeimim airbase and the nearby Latakia naval base on the Mediterranean, remain out of danger though Moscow was forced to evacuate the smaller Kuweires airbase near Aleppo.
While Russia remains committed to keeping Assad in power, the draining war in Ukraine makes it unlikely to allocate troops or resources to come to his rescue. “Russia will try to limit its support to the current contingent in Syria, as it’s clear that there are few other resources left,” said Smagin.
Smagin added that all signs suggest the rebel offensive has caught Moscow by surprise. “We saw that Russia’s initial reactions have been somewhat cautious, which reflects a certain confusion it is experiencing,” he said.
In a sign of Moscow’s discontent with the developments, Russia fired Sergei Kisel, the general in charge of its forces in Syria, earlier this week, according to the Russian military blogger Rybar, who is known to have ties to the defence ministry.
Rybar, like other pro-war channels with ties to the government, has expressed anger over the sudden and rapid loss of territory that Russia had helped reclaim over the years, with many in Moscow laying the blame on Assad.
“In modern history, this is probably the most disgraceful chapter in the history of a single country. Loyalists held Afghanistan during the Taliban’s offensive for much longer,” Rybar wrote, referring to the fall of the western-backed government in Kabul in 2021, which was met with gloating in Moscow at the time. He added that the Syrian leadership was plagued by “corruption and nepotism”.
Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner mercenary who fought in Syria but has since left the group, said Assad’s fighters had long been dependent on Russian help. “Assad’s men were always very bad at fighting. But Russia’s aerial support could once again restore the situation,” he said.
Assad has weathered previous crises, however, and Notte and others caution that it is too early to assess the long-term harm to Moscow’s standing.
“Whether this will lead to permanent damage to Russia’s image is too early to tell, because it will depend on what happens in the coming days and weeks,” she said.
“Leaders in Africa or the Middle East aren’t drawing any firm conclusions just yet. They are waiting to see how things unfold before making any decisions.”