Ukraine Courts Syria With an Eye Toward Expelling Russia From Kremlin’s Only Mediterranean Redoubts

As Russia clings to its only bases in the Mediterranean — they’re on the coast of Syria — Ukraine is moving aggressively to displace Moscow as Syria’s main source of imported grain. Soon to follow are university educations, military drone technologies, and aid on investigating war crimes.“The Russian and Assad regimes supported each other because their foundation is violence and torture,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Monday in Damascus as he met met with Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa. The regime of Bashar Al-Assad recognized Russia’s ownership of regions it conquered in Ukraine.This prompted Kyiv to break relations with Damascus. Monday, barely three weeks after Mr. Assad fled to Moscow, Mr. Sybiha opened Ukraine’s diplomatic representation in the Syrian capital. The opening to Ukraine is part of Syria’s larger re-orientation — away from Russia and Iran and toward the West, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. Syria’s newly appointed foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, posted Monday on X that he will make his first official foreign ministerial visit abroad to Saudi Arabia.For millennia, Syria was the wheat breadbasket of the Middle East. More recently, civil war, misrule, and a drought left Syria, a country of 25 million persons, critically dependent on food imports. One month ago, Russia suspended wheat deliveries, partly out of payment problems, partly out of fear their ships would be seized.Now, Ukraine is stepping forward as the alternative source for Black Sea grain. Last year, Ukraine pushed Russia’s Black Sea fleet out of the sea’s western waters. This year, Ukrainian grain exports returned to near normal levels as heavily loaded ships passed through Turkey’s Bosphorus. Monday’s delegation from Kyiv included Ukraine’s Minister Agrarian Policy and Food, Vitaliy Koval.“As we promised, the first 500 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat flour are planned to arrive tomorrow, ” President Zelensky posted Monday on X. “And there will be more deliveries, as well as more mutually beneficial cooperation in many areas.” Wheat flour and 20 trucks are coming to Syria under a humanitarian “Grain From Ukraine” program with the World Food Program. Traditionally, Ukraine is a big exporter of wheat and corn to the Middle East. On the educational front, thousands of Syrians studied in the Soviet Union, many in Soviet Ukraine. Now Kyiv offers to resume this historic role. On the military front, Ukraine offers to continue the training and aid that helped the rebels beat Mr. Assad’s Russia-trained army. “There will be strategic partnerships between us and Ukraine on the political, economic and social levels, and scientific partnerships,” Syrian foreign minister al-Shibani told his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha. “Certainly the Syrian people and the Ukrainian people have the same experience and the same suffering that we endured over 14 years.” Ukraine will share its experience in gathering evidence and conducting investigations to hold war criminals accountable. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister said: “When we saw the horrific footage from Saydnaya Prison, it reminded us of the torture chambers on territories liberated from Russian occupation.”Behind closed doors, the visiting Ukrainians undoubtedly lobbied Syria’s new government to break the Assad government’s long term leases of two bases to Russia. These are a naval base at Tartus and an air base at Khmeimim, next to the international airport for Latakia. Satellite imagery shows that the Russians have removed from both bases expensive equipment — helicopters, frigates, and air defense missiles. In the two weeks after Mr. Al-Assad’s fall, long convoys of Russian army trucks, jeeps, and armored personnel carriers arrived at the air base. From there, Il-76 transports and Antonov An-124s, some of the world’s largest military cargo planes, flew out men and equipment. It is not known if the Russians abandoned their listening stations near the border with Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty.Some of the planes flew 700 miles southwest across the Mediterranean to Al Khadim, eastern Libya. There, Russia maintains an air base. Sixty miles east of Benghazi, the de facto capital of eastern Libya, this base could become the new logistical base for Russia mercenary operations in the Sahel and the Central African Republic. Radio Free Europe satellite photo analysis also shows new activity around an embryonic Russian navy base near Port Sudan, on the Red Sea.For Russia, the Libya air base is inferior to the Syria air base. The longer flight distance would mean that Russian’s cargo planes would have to carry lighter loads or refuel somewhere along the route. For most flights, Russia would depend on Turkey for overflight permission.The Kremlin sees the Libyan base as unreliable. The regional warlord, Khalifa Haftar, has an American passport. He spent 20 years living at Langley, Virginia, near the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.For now, the Russian base retention strategy seems to be to lay low and to keep channels of communication open with Syria’s new government. On December 19, President Putin said of Syria at his annual marathon press conference: “If we stay there, we will need to do something in the interests of the host country.” He added that Moscow is offering to use the air and naval bases in 2025 to deliver humanitarian aid to SyriaOn Sunday, this policy seemed to yield benefits. Saudi state-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya aired an interview with Mr. Sharaa, Syria’s new leader. He said Syria and Russia share “strategic interests.”Heavily dependent on Turkish aid to win the war against Mr. Al-Assad, Syria may now find it useful to retain the two Russian bases as potential counterweights. Russia is Turkey’s regional rival. By road, Tartus is 85 miles south of the Turkish border and Khmeimim is only 35 miles south of the border.At the same time, there is a movement inside the 27-member European Union to tie normalization of relations with the expulsion of the Russians. The Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, said recently: “We want the Russians out.”Similarly, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, said Russia’s military bases “should not have a place” in Syria. The former prime minister of Estonia, a nation threatened by Russia, Ms. Kallas said: “Many foreign ministers took this up to say that, you know, it should be a condition for the new leadership that they also get rid of the Russian influence there.” The Biden Administration largely has been quiet in public about the Russian base issue.Syria’s new leaders also have to take into account domestic public opinion. Post-revolution, good feelings dissipated last week after Al-Assad loyalists came out of the woodwork and killed policemen of the new government. Expelling Russia would be a crowd pleaser.Over the last decade, Russian Air Force jets flew 32,000 air strikes against Syria’s rebels. Invariably, they took off from Russia’s Khmeimim air base. Recently, Syrian soldiers posted outside the bases have told reporters that they want the Russians to go home.

Ukraine Courts Syria With an Eye Toward Expelling Russia From Kremlin’s Only Mediterranean Redoubts

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