Two strategically-important Russian military facilities in Syria and Moscow’s very presence in the Middle East are under serious threat from rapidly advancing insurgents, Russian war bloggers have warned.
With Russian military resources mostly tied down in Ukraine where Moscow’s forces are rushing to take more territory before Donald Trump comes to power in the US in January, Russia’s ability to influence the situation on the ground in Syria is far more limited than in 2015 when it intervened decisively to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Rapid advances by the insurgents threaten to undermine Russia’s geopolitical clout in the Middle East and its ability to project power in the region, across the Mediterranean and into Africa. They also risk dealing an embarrassing setback to President Vladimir Putin, who casts Russia’s intervention in Syria as an example of how Moscow can use force to shape events far away and compete with the West.
But Russian war bloggers, some of whom are close to the Russian Defence Ministry and whom the Russian authorities allow greater freedom to speak out than the military, say the most immediate threat is to the future of Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province and to its naval facility at Tartous on the coast.
The Tartous facility is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a staging post to fly its military contractors in and out of Africa.
