The overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dealt a crushing blow to Russia’s aspirations to great-power status. Due to its military overextension in Ukraine and intelligence failures prior to the rapid-fire offensive carried out by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Russia was unable to defend its strongest ally in the Middle East.
Russia also faces the loss of its Tartus naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast as well as Khmeimim air base, which was established in tandem with its 2015 military intervention on Assad’s behalf. Satellite imagery reveals that Russia has evacuated large numbers of military personnel and equipment from its Syrian bases and has withdrawn from the interior regions of the country. At the end of December, Russian forces were only present at Khmeimim air base and the Tartus port, and Ukrainian intelligence indicates that Russia plans to fully withdraw troops by February 2025.
Though these setbacks mar President Vladimir Putin’s foreign-policy legacy and weaken Russia’s standing in the Middle East, they could also have a profoundly negative impact on its influence in Africa.
The Kremlin’s decision not to redeploy its Africa Corps mercenaries to Syria during Assad’s last days reflects Africa’s strategic importance for Putin. But the loss of Tartus could severely complicate logistical support for Russian forces in Africa, and the failure of Russia’s so-called Syria model of counterinsurgency may undermine its soft power on the continent.
As the illusion of Russian power in Syria has been definitively shattered, African autocracies are second-guessing Moscow’s ability to serve as their last line of defense in a moment of crisis.
After Assad turned the tide of the Syrian civil war by recapturing Aleppo in late 2016, Russia forged a robust partnership with Libyan National Army chieftain Khalifa Haftar. Russian weapons—such as Kalibr missiles and Pantsir S-1 air defense systems—streamed into Libya, and private military companies from the Wagner Group followed in 2018.
Russia’s ability to supply war materiel and personnel to Libya hinged on possessing a durable foothold in Syria. The Tartus base served as a key resupply hub and aided in equipment maintenance and streamlined personnel rotations to Libya. Moscow’s use of Syria as an aerial springboard was equally crucial. Regular flights from Syria’s coastal region of Latakia to Haftar’s bases in Khadim and Jufra allowed for the smooth transfer of loaded Il-76 and An-124 jets to Libyan airfields.
As Russia’s strategic footprint in sub-Saharan Africa expanded, the logistical importance of Syria did, too. The Wagner Group’s military intervention in Mali, which began in late 2021 and served as a gateway for smaller-scale deployments to Burkina Faso in 2023 and Niger in 2024, depended logistically on Russian assets in Syria.
And when civil war erupted in Sudan in April 2023 between paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo’s forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, a Syria-Libya-Sudan flight nexus allowed for the transfer of Russian surface-to-air missiles to the RSF.
Due to these links between Russia’s Syria and Africa strategies, Assad’s defeat has inspired a collective panic in Moscow. Nikolay Sukhov, a Middle East expert at a Moscow-based think tank called the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, described Syria as a “jump-off point to Africa” in an article published in August 2024 and warned that without it, Russia could struggle to execute regular direct flights to African theaters.
In a Telegram post published in December 2024, Russian military analyst Alexander Kots hailed Tartus and Khmeimim’s importance in Russia’s fight against “global isolation imposed by the West” and warned that if the facilities were lost, “all our projects on the Black Continent will have to be, if not curtailed, then at least revised.”
This doomsday scenario would be detrimental to the increasingly fragile Russian war economy. Gold reserves in Sudan and Mali and diamonds from the Central African Republic have provided vital hard currency for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During the immediate buildup and aftermath of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, at least 16 planeloads of gold travelled from Sudan to Russia via Syria. Without Syria serving as a transit point for these mineral extraction operations, the cost of smuggling these precious stones and metals into Russia might rise precipitously. If Russia’s security presence declines, the commercial momentum that fueled a record $24.5 billion in trade with Africa in 2023 could dissipate.
Engaging with Syria’s new authorities is Russia’s optimal strategy to prevent this outcome. Despite castigating HTS as terrorists up until Assad’s flight from Damascus to Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov confirmed in mid-December that the Kremlin is negotiating with HTS on base access and cooperation in the fight against “international terrorism.”
A deal that sees Russia vote to lift HTS’s terrorism-related U.N. sanctions in exchange for keeping its facilities would be a welcome sigh of relief. While HTS’s initial rhetoric has been harsher toward Iran than Russia, it could leverage the carrot of base access to secure reparations from Moscow. This hard bargain would play well among Syrians who cheered the exodus of Russian forces, blaming the Kremlin for much of the untold destruction of the past decade of war.
If the burden of Russia’s past war crimes in Syria and alliance with Assad proves too overwhelming for a base deal, then the Kremlin’s alternatives are bleak. Russia could try to convert eastern Libya into the logistical linchpin of its Africa strategy.
Since Muammar al-Qaddafi broached the construction of a Russian facility in Benghazi during a 2008 visit to Russia, the Kremlin has eyed a military foothold on the eastern stretch of Libya’s Mediterranean coast. A 2023 defense accord between Russia and the Libyan National Army, struck after Haftar met with Putin in Moscow, has revived speculation about the construction of a Russian base in Tobruk.
Despite these rumors, there are many practical obstacles to Libya replacing Syria as a resupply headquarters for Russian forces in Africa. The influential Rybar Telegram channel recently argued that only empty cargo planes can travel the longer distance from Russia to Libya without refueling, and that heavy loaded vehicles would require multiple stops to make this journey. Rybar concluded that the idea of “supplying operations in Africa via Libya is very expensive and unstable.”
Uncertainties about Libya’s long-term power balance also undercut its desirability as a base location. If the Haftar family is turfed by political rivals in Tobruk—or if Libya progresses towards national reconciliation and free elections—then Russia could be caught out in the cold.
Sudan’s Red Sea coast is equally unlikely to replace Syria as a hub. Since Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a draft agreement with Khartoum in 2020 regarding the construction of a “logistical support center” in Port Sudan, no tangible progress has been made. Sudan’s thwarted transition to civilian rule prevented parliamentary approval for the basing agreement, and the ongoing civil war has indefinitely stalled the project.
Even if the chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is motivated by his need for ammunition and aviation parts to grant Russia an arms-for-base deal, Tartus’s storage capacity will not be fully replaced. Russia would only be able to deploy up to four naval vessels in Port Sudan compared to 11 in Tartus, and refueling would be much less efficient.
Aside from these logistical hurdles, Russia’s ability to market itself as a security provider to fragile African states has suffered a severe blow. Even though most Russian airstrikes in Syria targeted opposition factions and civilian areas, the Kremlin framed its military intervention as a decisive counterterrorism triumph against the Islamic State.
This purported triumph was achieved through supporting existing state structures and contrasted with the gun-barrel democracy promotion that has accompanied U.S. counterterrorism campaigns. Russia’s so-called Syria model of counterinsurgency, which was blind to human rights and viewed authoritarian stability as an antidote to extremism, became a key selling point for its would-be security partners in sub-Saharan Africa.
Many African officials bought into this propaganda. During his 2017 meeting with Putin in Russia, then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir praised the decisive intervention on Assad’s behalf and asked Russia for “protection from the aggressive acts of the United States.” To drum up support for a military cooperation agreement with Moscow ahead of the 2019 Russia-Africa summit in Sochi, Russia, Nigerian Ambassador to Russia Steve Ugbah expressed hope that Russia would help Nigeria crush Boko Haram.
These sentiments also facilitated Russia’s military entry into Mali. In the months leading up to Mali’s August 2020 coup d’état, which set the country on the path toward military dictatorship, anti-Western activists protested the inefficacy of counterterrorism policies promoted by France and the United Nations. Russia was presented as Mali’s savior, and the rallying cry “help us like Syria” was heard on the streets of Bamako.
The image of Russian military power in Syria served as a necessary counterexample to its travails in Ukraine. It also convinced African clients to stay the course even as its military operations in Libya and Mali produced underwhelming results. As Russia markets itself as a security partner to fragile states in West and Central Africa, its recent track record looks much less appealing than its braggadocious rhetoric suggests.
Even if Africa does not turn its back on Russia, Assad’s fall has forced the Kremlin to admit to some hard truths about its capacity for military power projection in global theaters. Ruslan Pukhov—an expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technology, a leading Russian defense think tank—wrote that “Moscow does not have sufficient military forces, resources, influence and authority for effective forceful intervention outside the former USSR, and it can act there, in fact, only with the indulgent permission of other strong powers and for as long as they allow it.”
This scenario could encourage Russia to place more emphasis on soft power and hybrid warfare in its struggle for influence in Africa.
Where Russian forces are already entrenched, Kremlin-aligned commentators are also evaluating the merits of expansive military interventions in the global south. Fyodor Lukyanov, an editor at the journal Russia in Global Affairs, quipped that former U.S. President Barack Obama’s depiction of Russia as a “regional power” should no longer be viewed as an insult because “global powers are leaving the stage, because carrying such a burden is not only difficult, but also unnecessary.”
This line of thinking could encourage Russia to strengthen its partnerships with key African regional powers in the hope that they might do Moscow’s bidding by proxy.
Though Russia’s ability to engage with Syria’s new leaders remains uncertain, Assad’s ouster has greatly diminished its confidence and power-projection capacity in Africa. The geopolitical spillover from the recent events in Syria extends well beyond the Middle East.
