The fall of Assad shows Russia can be defeated – but that won’t deter Putin in Europe

The end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria has led to many asking questions about Russia’s ability to project power overseas, and what it may mean for the course of the war in Ukraine. Here, Keir Giles explains why we should be wary of any hasty conclusions

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has led to questions over Russia’s ability to sustain its military adventures abroad. Russia had supported Assad militarily for over a decade, building on long-standing ties between Moscow and Damascus. But the rapid advance of anti-government forces this month saw Russia apparently powerless to influence the situation beyond a number of airstrikes (as always, apparently mostly delivered on civilian targets) in support of government forces.

That has inevitably led people to draw conclusions about Russia’s ability to project power overseas, and what it may mean for the course of the war in Ukraine.

But hasty comparisons should be avoided. There is a world of difference between a distant operation in support of a friend of Moscow clinging to power and a major war on Russia’s own borders for territory which Vladimir Putin has declared should be Moscow’s to rule.

In previous decades there used to be a truism among observers of the Russian armed forces that Russia would mount military interventions in places that it could drive to – or, ideally, get there by train.

The military deployment to Syria in the previous decade conclusively broke the mould, demonstrating a Russian ability to use air and sea lift to move into a country distant from Russia’s borders in a manner that surprised and impressed analysts at the time.

But once Russia got there, its manner of going about its business confirmed that other long-standing realities of dealing with Russia remained unchanged. The embrace of atrocities and the tactic of destroying the infrastructure that keeps civilians alive in order to terrorise the populace into submission continued a pattern set by Moscow over decades and centuries and provided a grim preview of the horrors that would be inflicted on Ukrainians today.

The fall of Assad is undoubtedly a setback for Russia’s ambitions to protect power in the Middle East. Whether – and how – Russia’s forces in place in the country will need to evacuate is just one of the open questions arising from the change of power in Syria. Another is what the potential impact may be on Russia’s extension of its power further afield, particularly its presence across Africa, for which a staging post in Syria was an important logistical enabler.

Another potential positive outcome is that other murderous dictators around the world looking for Russian support will understand that support is finite and conditional. That provides an opportunity for Western powers – should they be willing and able to take it – to undermine the willingness of some of the world’s most repellent regimes to back Moscow and invite Russian influence to expand into their own countries.

A Russian tank drives along a road in the Syrian town of Amuda (AFP/Getty)

But the implications for Russia’s ambitions for Europe are more limited. In both nature and purpose, Russian support for Assad was a very different undertaking than its assault on Ukraine.

Russian support to Syria was always intended to be a limited footprint, light on ground forces, and deliver results primarily through the application of air power and the installation of advisers and special forces.

In a way, this reflected the smaller, relatively well-trained and well-equipped army that Russia was trying to develop before 2022. In Ukraine, Russia has by now comprehensively moved away from this model, and fallen back on its comfort zone of winning through quantity not quality – throwing large numbers of troops with limited training forward to soak up bullets and wear Ukrainian forces down through sheer pressure and attrition.

In addition, while presence in Syria was an undoubted foreign policy coup for Moscow – coming as it did on the heels of Russian success in facing down the United States over Its own potential intervention there in 2013 – this was nevertheless a peripheral interest for Russia. That’s very different from Ukraine, where Putin has staked not only a claim, but Russia’s entire economy and future on restoration of the empire.

Vladimir Putin meeting with Bashar al-Assad at the Kremlin in September 2021 (SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty)

And while the fall of Assad continues a succession of reverses and blows to Russia’s prestige, on the heels of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, and the falling back on North Korean reinforcements to bolster Russian military manpower, none of these presents a serious threat to the power of the Kremlin at home in the way that failure of the war of reconquest of Ukraine would.

In other words, while it’s true that Syria demonstrates Russia can’t always dictate the outcome of conflict far from home, that should be of limited comfort to Europe.

There, Russia is still working hard to rebuild its land forces, alongside air and naval forces that are largely unscathed by the nature of the fighting in Ukraine. There is a consensus across European defence and intelligence chiefs that Russia’s objectives aren’t limited to Ukraine.

The real lesson to take from Syria – one reinforced by Ukraine over the last three years – is that Russia and its friends are not invincible, and can be halted in their aims by determined opposition. That should be another (yet another) wake-up call to the UK and the countries of Western Europe to look to their own defences if they wish to deny Putin his ambitions.