Syrian Rebels’ Advance Prompts Russia To Retreat From Its Mediterranean Naval Base

With Syrian rebels only 50 miles away, Russia has evacuated all its warships from Tartus, its only naval base in the Mediterranean, satellite photos show. Situated 100 miles east of Cyprus and 100 miles south of Turkey, Tartus has since the Soviet days been Moscow’s platform for force projection into the Eastern Mediterranean.“Russia is evacuating naval assets from its base in Tartus, Syria, which may suggest that Russia does not intend to send significant reinforcements to support Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime in the near term,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported last night. Suddenly missing from the base’s two floating piers are three frigates, one submarine, and two oilers.Yesterday Turkish-supplied Syrian rebels entered Hama, 90 miles by road from Tartus. If they reach the coast, they also could threaten Russia’s other big military installation in Syria, Khmeimim Air Base. Built a decade ago with air-conditioned quarters for 1,000 Russian airmen, the base housed 70 Russian warplanes. As recently as 2022, 4,000 air strikes were flown from this base.The two bases are in the heartland of the Alawites, the ruling al-Assad clan’s ethnoreligious group. For decades, this coastal area has been a bastion for the regime.Russia’s retreat from Tartus is part of a new weakness of Mr. Assad’s allies. After almost five years of relative quiet, a new geopolitical realignment is opening doors for the rebels. Over the last two months, Israel has killed about 3,500 Hezbollah fighters. Just yesterday, Israel said it carried out an airstrike on a car near Damascus, killing a senior Hezbollah liaison with the Syrian army, Salman Jumaa. Similarly this fall, Israel bombed a series of Iranian targets, putting Iran on the defensive. Yesterday Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said Tehran would consider sending troops to Syria, were Damascus to ask. Russia, the third leg of the tripod of support for Mr. Assad, is distracted by its war against Ukraine. Desperate to avoid imposing another national draft, President Putin has quietly drawn down his expeditionary force in Syria, a force that once numbered 20,000. In a visit to Moscow last year, Mr. Assad announced publicly that he would welcome more Russian bases in Syria. With the Ukraine war raging, the Kremlin passed on the offer. By the latest count of Ukraine’s General Staff, Russia has lost nearly 750,000 soldiers killed and severely wounded in almost three years of war in Ukraine.In Syria, there are unconfirmed social media reports that Russian soldiers have been caught and killed in the fast-moving rebel offensive. After almost a decade of scorched earth bombing by Russia’s Air Force, rebel hostility to Russia is sharp. One video from Western Aleppo shows an Islamist rebel tearing down a large poster of the Russian and Syrian leaders. Then, he grinds his boot into the image of Mr. Putin’s face. Separately, a photo from Aleppo’s Basel Square shows rebels tearing down and burning a Russian flag.Yesterday, Mr. Putin called for an end to “terrorist aggression” in Syria. His ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, told the Security Council that the Syrian rebels are “openly flaunting” that they are trained and armed by Ukrainian military intelligence.While Turkey clearly is the prime backer of the rebels, Ukraine does engage Russian forces in a deadly, post-Cold War, “Spy vs. Spy” game. Last July, Ukrainian special forces attacked Russian forces at Kuweires airfield, east of Aleppo. After a massacre of Russian soldiers in Mali, Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov said Kyiv supplied intelligence to the Touaregs. The Kyiv Post published a photo of 40 Malian rebels holding a Ukrainian flag alongside the Touareg flag.In Syria, the most prominent sign of Russian retreat is the empty piers at Tartus. Half a century ago, in 1971, the Soviets negotiated a basing deal with Hafez Al-Assad, father of the current president. In 2017, as the civil war placed the fate of the Assad regime in the balance, Russia and Syria signed a 49-year, rent-free basing agreement. This treaty allows Russia to keep up to 11 ships at Tartus, including nuclear-powered vessels.Two years earlier, a similar agreement was signed for Khmeimim air base, but with no time limit. As Russia rapidly ramped up its military presence in Syria, Tarsus became the primary port of entry for war matériel. For a decade, cargo ships plied the “Syrian Express,” carrying millions of tons of war goods to Tartus from Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.Today, the Tartus seawall protects empty piers. The Russian Navy ships are lingering offshore, waiting to see what the tides of war will bring. Due to the Russia-Ukraine war, Turkey has closed the Bosphorus Strait and the Black Sea to new Russian warships. The Russian Navy’s fledgling Mediterranean flotilla may have to retreat to ports in Libya and Algeria or to the Baltic. “The dramatic shift in the front lines in Syria now puts the base at risk,” H.I. Sutton wrote yesterday in the Paris-based site Naval News. “It now appears possible that the port will eventually be attacked or abandoned.”

Syrian Rebels’ Advance Prompts Russia To Retreat From Its Mediterranean Naval Base

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