Russia in Global Affairs

For citation, please use:
Royce, D.P., 2025. Russia’s Real Interests Before and After the Fall of Damascus. Russia in Global Affairs, 23(3), pp. 197–220. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-3-197-220

The Syrian government’s collapse has sparked numerous predictions of dire consequences for Russia, but these are greatly exaggerated. These exaggerations are in most cases likely driven by simple alarmism (on the Russian side) and wishful thinking (on the anti-Russian side), but could cause the Russian public to blame its government for things that either did not happen or of which the government is not guilty, and/or cause the Russian government to overreact.

It is therefore important to establish what interests Russia does and does not have in Syria, the extent to which its actual interests have been damaged by the fall of Damascus, and the means by which it can protect and advance those interests in the future. This article does so, proceeding as described in the abstract.

1. Non-Interests

i. War on Terror

First, Russia’s interests do not include waging some general “war on terror.”

Aside from narrow operations launched at specific immediate threats, a state can and must defend itself against terrorism within, and ideally at, its borders. It cannot hope to eradicate all possible sources of danger across the entire world, and cannot prevent a certain ideology from taking power anywhere on Earth. Salafism-Wahhabism in Syria is no more dangerous to Russia than the Taliban in Afghanistan or the ideology and finances that flow from the Gulf. Russia can and must be defended from terrorism through intelligence operations within Russia, and an immigration policy that keeps potential threats out of Russia. It must eschew the ruinous Cosmopoliberal tendency to insert oneself into everyone else’s affairs, and admit everyone else into one’s own country.

And if the elimination of specifically ISIL was, nevertheless, needed, the U.S. and local actors were already pursuing that. While the U.S. has supported certain ‘moderate’ Salafi-Wahhabi groups in Syria, it is no more ISIL’s puppetmaster (as believed by some in Russia) than Russia is ISIL’s air force (as believed by many in the U.S. (Weiss, 2015)).

ii. Economic Interests

As for Russia’s economic interests in Syria, they are seemingly quite limited.

Third-party data on trade in goods (World Bank, а) depict a negligible economic relationship between Russia and Syria, especially since the latter’s civil war began:

As for Russian investments in Syria, in official statistics they are censored (Rosstat, 2002; 2010; 2023) or reported as zero (IMF, 2022). The oft-repeated figure of $19-20b (Kortunov, 2024) is extremely questionable.[1] Official statements are vague and disparate, preventing any estimation of the scale of Russia’s realized/planned investments/aid to Syria, let alone their utility to Russia.[2] Overall, the absence of clear references to large-scale investment projects suggests that Russian activities have been small-scale and/or mostly restricted to donations (which are costly, rather than useful, to Russia). Moreover, most future ‘investment opportunities’ would likely have been of no use to Russia, as Russian humanitarian supplies, postwar reconstruction capabilities, and more general infrastructural/economic capabilities will be needed for reconstruction and development in Russia itself (especially Novorossiya and Kursk Oblast) for the foreseeable future.

Syria does have the tenth-largest debt to Russia, but at the fairly negligible amount of $525m (World Bank, b).

And it has little oil: 0.17% of global reserves (2.5b/1.5t barrels) (OPEC, 2022, p. 22). Not that Russia needs any more oil, anyway.

In sum, Russia appears to have minimal economic interests in Syria, either realized or potential.

iii. Prestige/Influence

Nor is it in Russia’s interests (in this context or any other) to seek abstract “prestige” or “influence,” as if these things could be accumulated and spent like resources in a video game.

Many states probably did increase their estimates of Russian power and reliability following Russia’s successful intervention at the behest of Damascus. And that sort of thing is generally good for Russia. However, Syria’s 2024 collapse was so rapid, complete, and “endogenous” (more a matter of internal weakness than of an external adversary’s strength) that no amount of external assistance could have saved it. (As Tehran and Moscow appear to have realized when they rightly began withdrawing their assets from Syria, rather than rushing more in.) Thus, it is unlikely that the debacle has substantively “dented [Russia’s] reputation,” as celebrated by U.S. media (MacFarquhar, 2024).

iv. Orthodoxy

The protection of Orthodox Christians, including in Syria, arguably is a Russian interest, albeit a normative-ideological, not Realpolitik, one.

However, in Syria, the total Christian share of the population (estimated at 14.1% in the 1943 census (Hourani, 1947, p.76)) was declining even before the war, due to lower birth rates and higher emigration rates. On the eve of the conflict, it was estimated at 10%,[3] 8-10%,[4] 6.8%,[5] 5-6%,[6] or 5%.[7] Then, due to Christians’ persecution by the Salafi-Wahhabis and due to their concentration in (often war-devastated) cities, their share fell further, to 6%[8] or 3%[9] a few years into the war, and to 3.8%,[10] 3%,[11] 2.9%,[12] or 1.5%[13] closer to Damascus’s fall.

Assuming that roughly one-third of these are Orthodox (who were estimated at 34% of all Syrian Christians in the 1943 Census (Hourani, 1947, p.76)), this would place their population somewhere between 0.5% (100,000)[14] and 1.3% (253,000)[15] today. In other words, they are negligible in both absolute and relative terms, and the community has likely entered a “death spiral” in which it has become so small and weak that it would have continued to emigrate, intermarry, convert, and otherwise disappear even if the government had not fallen.

Thus, while the Syrian government’s lasting victory would have been strictly beneficial to Syria’s Orthodox community, and Salafi-Wahhabi victory will certainly put the nail in its coffin, it was already on a steep decline by the start of the civil war, and probably doomed by the war regardless of outcome. In any case, at this point, almost nothing of the community remains to protect.

2. Actual Interests

Thus, Russia has only two actual, active interests in Syria.

i. Iran

The first is helping Iran as a major de facto ally against the U.S.-led Cosmopoliberal Bloc (Royce, 2025).

Non-service GDP (PPP) is a minimally-acceptable approximation of state power. GDP not only represents a state’s economic resources, but also, as population × GDP per capita, it represents demographic resources (population) and social/technological development and mobilizable/spare resources (GDP per capita). However, services with low, zero, or even negative real value can inflate service sectors without any corresponding or resulting increase in the production of goods (which most services are ultimately meant to facilitate, having no inherent ‘end-use’ value of their own). It is important that such services not be counted, especially when analyzing international relations, where especial importance is held by food sovereignty, energy security, military-industrial potential/production, etc.

Thus, using 2023 non-service GDP (PPP)[16] to indicate state power, Iran’s is 13% of the U.S.’s, making it the strongest full adversary of the Cosmopoliberal Bloc after China (239%) and Russia itself (about 48% with Novorossiya plus Belarus), with the next-strongest probably being Myanmar (3%) and Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba (at or below 3%).

While it is important to secure the neutrality and ideally friendship of powerful nonaligned states such as India, another foremost objective of Russia must be the protection and strengthening of its major existing allies; especially Iran, given that China can mostly look out for itself.

And for the purpose of aiding Iran, Russian support for Damascus was superficially sensible, as it would provide Iran with a land route to Shi’ite Lebanon and with an (Alawite, i.e., quasi-Shi’ite) ally.

However, Syria’s net utility as an ally was actually negative.

The Syrian debacle’s most important general lesson is that an alliance is useful if:

its long-term benefits…

• from the ally’s contribution to competition with the common enemy, or its other assistance, that is ensured/facilitated/streamlined by the alliance;
• from the ally’s continued existence as an adversary of the common enemy, and non-subordination/-conquest by the common enemy, that is, ensured by the alliance

…exceed its long-term costs

• from combating any new adversaries brought by (or carried ‘within’) the new ally.

This balance has little to do with the raw strength of a potential ally; if a weak state shares one’s enemies and does not bring with itself any new ones, then it is a net-useful ally. However, a state is likely to provide net-negative value as an ally (1) if it brings with itself new adversaries far stronger than it is, and/or (2) if its government is based upon ethnic/religious groups that are far under 50% of the state’s population, and its government is thus unable to maintain itself without major and indefinite foreign assistance.

Now, the latter ‘minority government’ status probably does not apply to any of the African states that Russia is currently helping. While they are obviously benefitting from Russian support right now, their underlying demographic situations do not indefinitely doom them. The CAR conflict is principally between the Christian government and Muslim rebels, with Christians forming 73% of the population and Muslims, 14% (Johnson and Grims, 2020). And in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the (predominantly Sunni Muslim) governments are opposed by Salafi-Wahhabi extremists and, in Mali and Niger, also by Berber Tuareg separatists. Salafism-Wahhabism is a minority sect/ideology that does not seem to have mass appeal beyond its birthplace in Arabia. And the Tuareg are very roughly 10% in both Mali (Minority Rights Group, 2023) and Niger (Minority Rights Group, 2020).

But Syria, as an ally, brought with itself enemies, of which at least Turkiye was largely new for Russia and Iran. And it was also a clear ‘minority government,’ based upon 20-25% of its population (Alawites, Shi’ites, Christians, and Druze) against the other 75-80% (Johnson and Grims, 2022). In the abstract, this meant that Damascus did not have any positive/surplus power to contribute to its allies, but rather would be theoretically expected to constantly or at least frequently demand from them resources more than twice its own (to increase its power from 25 to at least 75, the level of its adversaries’ power).

And while Damascus was partly fighting (indirectly) against the Cosmopoliberal Bloc (supporting certain Syrian rebel groups), it was mostly fighting indirectly against Sunni Arab states and Turkiye, and directly against much of its own population. While resources devoted to fighting the Cosmopoliberal Bloc are not wasted, the Sunni Arab states and Turkiye would be better reconciled to Russia and Iran rather than fought by them, and Syria’s Sunni population is not an inherent adversary of Iran, let alone Russia. Similarly, Syria’s takeover by the government’s adversaries was/is more likely to provide an ally to Turkiye and/or the Sunni Arabs, not to the Cosmopoliberal Bloc. Russo-Iranian support for Syria thus does not have the positive value of depriving their common adversary of some gain. Things would be different if Turkiye and the Sunni Arabs were clear and permanent adversaries of Russia and Iran, or if Damascus were mainly fighting the Cosmopoliberal Bloc rather than its Sunni neighbors and its own population, or if a defeated Syria were likely to become a client of the U.S. rather than a client of its Sunni neighbors (or simply an intractable anarchy).

Thus, in sum, it is doubtful that Syria was a net-beneficial ally to Iran or Russia.

However, helping Iran is very much a Russian interest, and several ways of actually doing so are discussed below.

ii. Logistics

Syria’s air bases were largely useful only for combat in Syria (i.e., they were needed to support Syria, Syria was not supported because of a need for them) and thus are now probably obsolete.

Beyond that, Syria did provide a Caspian→Iran→Iraq→Syria→Med corridor, aircraft refueling at Hmeimim, and a naval base on the Mediterranean at Tartus. However, these are all of conditional or limited utility.

Syrian Corridor

The Syrian corridor is useful only if (or to guard against the possibility that) Turkiye closes the Black Sea Straits and its airspace. (And only then if Iranian and Iraqi territories are available.) Otherwise, Africa, the Mediterranean, and even Hmeimim and Tartus are more accessible from Crimea via the Straits (by sea) and Anatolia (by air).

And Turkiye is constrained here by the Montreux Convention, according to which:

• The passage of civilian seacraft through the Bosporus and Dardanelles is guaranteed by Art.2 (see also Art.4-7).
• The passage of military seacraft through the Straits is nominally guaranteed by Art.10-12 (except if the seacraft (Art.19) or Turkiye itself (Art.20) are at war). However, in practice, it is heavily subject to Turkish discretion, as in 2022 Turkiye demonstrated its ability (presumably/implicitly on the basis of “consider[ing] itself to be threatened with imminent danger of war” per Art.21) to close the Straits to military seacraft even when neither it nor the seacraft’s states are at war.
• The passage of civilian aircraft between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean is guaranteed by Art.23: “In order to assure the passage of civil aircraft between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, the Turkish Government will indicate the air routes available for this purpose… Civil aircraft may use these routes provided that they give the Turkish Government…a general notification of the dates of passage” [Emphasis added]. As a 1952 analysis put it, “the rights granted to foreign aircraft by the Montreux Convention…are even more liberal than those contained in the Chicago Convention.” Art.5 of the latter grants only “a privilege of flight…to non-scheduled” flights, while Art.23 of Montreux “gives a right—not a mere privilege—of free passage to all foreign [civilian] aircraft,” including scheduled flights (Hughes, 1952).
• The passage of military aircraft through Turkish airspace is not guaranteed by Montreux, and instead is entirely subject to Turkish discretion. (Normally, in any other international-navigation waterway, the passage of all vessels, including military seacraft and military aircraft, would be free per custom and UNCLOS. However, the Straits have their own custom, and Turkiye has not signed UNCLOS.)

Therefore, at least in theory, the Syrian corridor is useful only as a backup for military aircraft, and to a lesser extent military seacraft, to access the Mediterranean and beyond. Everything else (including civilian sea and air transports with military cargo) has guaranteed right of passage through/over the Straits.

Hmeimim

As for Hmeimim or any other airbases in Syria, they provide limited benefit (besides obsolete support of local combat operations). Hmeimim is only 1,000 km south of Sevastopol (if Turkish airspace is available, which it should be, at least to civilian aircraft, per Montreux Art.23) and 840 km west of airbases in Iran (if Turkish airspace is not available, but Iranian, Iraqi, and Syrian airspace is, as they must be for Hmeimim to have much of any use at all).

Here and throughout the article, I assume that Russian flights have a range of 5,000km. The mainstay Il-76MD is stated by the MOD to have a practical range of 4,200 km with 47-ton cargo and 7,200 km with 20-ton cargo (Ministerstvo Oborony, n.d.). The theoretical range, with less backup fuel, would be even greater.

Leaving from (1) Sevastopol, (2) Piranshahr (selected as one of various Iranian airbases near the Iraqi border) via Iraq and Syria, and (3) Hmeimim, flights have the following (correspondingly shaded) 5,000km limits:

As one can see, they do not differ from one another significantly, and are all more than sufficient to reach as far as the CAR.

Tartus

Finally, Tartus is also not much closer to things than Russia’s own ports are.

Given modern technology (and tanker support as necessary), the distance saved by Tartus (roughly about 500 km if going to the West Mediterranean or beyond, 1,000km if going to the East Mediterranean itself, and 1,500 km if going to the Indian Ocean) is not going to be the difference between a journey’s viability or non-viability.

Moreover, the Conventions of Montreaux and Constantinople guarantee passage (including of military vessels) through the Bosporus Straits and Suez Canal. (Albeit with the above-noted qualification in the case of the Straits.)

Accordingly, Tartus appears to be of real use only (1) in the event of naval combat operations in the East Mediterranean, and (2) to avoid the physical traffic of the Bosporus Straits and Suez Canal.

iii. Summary

In sum, support for Damascus was not ultimately helpful to Iran at all.

Meanwhile, the Syrian corridor is useful only as a backup for the access of military (not civilian) aircraft (not so much seacraft) to the Mediterranean. Hmeimim barely extends the range of Russian aircraft beyond that provided by Crimea/Iran. And Tartus provides substantial benefit only to active naval combat operations in the East Mediterranean and (by avoiding the physical complications of the Bosporus and Suez) to a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean. These benefits are real, but situational, limited, and potentially null depending on Russian objectives.

Accordingly, support for Damascus was of limited (and in some cases null or even negative) use to Russia’s interests: supporting Iran and its own logistics.

The task now is to determine how these interests can be addressed as well as (or ideally, better than) they were in the past.

Note that some of the following proposals (namely Plans A and B) may seem difficult or even implausible. However, the ongoing transformation of international relations (including but not limited to, the decline of the Cosmopoliberal Bloc and the rise of China and Russia) will make for many new opportunities that can be exploited (and indeed, in some cases, already have been exploited) in ways that might have once seemed implausible or even impossible. Moreover, the main alternatives to this article’s proposals are presumably:

• losing most access to Africa and the Mediterranean;
• trying to entirely reverse the outcome of the war across the whole of Syria; or
• somehow maintaining the Hmeimim and Tartus bases, and continuing to transit the country from Iraq to the Mediterranean and back, contrary to the wishes of Turkiye and Damascus.

These are all either entirely unacceptable or entirely nonviable, whereas Plans A and B are quite desirable and at least possibly viable, and the backup plans that follow them are not ideal but should be achievable.

3. Plan A: Alignment with Turkiye

The ideal response to Russia’s functional defeat in Syria would be the defeat’s transformation into something outright beneficial. Specifically, its seizure as an opportunity to accomplish rapprochement with Turkiye.

Again using 2023 non-service GDP (PPP) (here expressed as % of U.S.) as a rough proxy for power, the following situation…

…is far better for Russia/Iran than is…

Moreover, as noted above, the Syrian territorial corridor is useful to Russia only as an alternative to the Bosporus and Turkish airspace.

Turkiye itself is logistically more useful/important to Russia than Syria is, and the availability of passage through Turkiye makes Syria largely redundant.

Accordingly, a friendly or at least neutral Turkiye (and Azerbaijan) are extremely beneficial to Russia, even at the “expense” of Syria (and Armenia).

Now that Turkish and Azerbaijani victories in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh have (hopefully) eliminated the main sources of hostility between themselves and Russia, Russia should take this opportunity to accelerate detente or outright alignment.

Russia should probably recognize Syria (along with Iraqi Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, and maybe even Armenia) as falling within Turkiye’s sphere of influence.

Some sort of compromise or stable modus vivendi will also be necessary in Libya, but there Russia and Turkiye are not inherently bound to different sides (as Turkiye was to the Turkic Muslims in Nagorno-Karabakh and to the Sunnis in Syria). The Libyan conflict is not ethnic or confessional, and its ideological division (ostensibly Islamist vs. secular) is probably not so deep or clear-cut.

In return, Turkiye would guarantee:

• continued Iranian access to Shi’ite Lebanon through Turkiye’s Syrian client;
• free passage of Russian vessels (civilian and military, sea and air) through the Straits and Turkish airspace (all, aside from military aircraft, already guaranteed by Montreaux);
• the preservation of Russia’s naval base at Tartus, if a permanent Mediterranean fleet is really necessary and if a replacement port cannot be attained/maintained elsewhere (see below). (Hmeimim, as explained above, is of truly little benefit if Turkish airspace is available.)

Such a rapprochement would not only satisfy both of Russia’s interests, but it would do so better than support for Damascus did.

4. Plan B: A Minority State

A decidedly inferior option would be to attempt a partial reversal of the defeat in Syria, which would potentially return to Russia and Iran the originally-promised fruits of victory there, but at the likely expense of foregoing alignment with Turkiye and perhaps further worsening relations with it.

However, if Turkiye rejects the above-described rapprochement in favor of a (likely unattainable) partnership with the Cosmopoliberal Bloc and Israel, then Russia would have something to gain, and little to lose, from pursuing the de facto or even de jure creation of a Minority State in Syria, based on the country’s Alawites, Shi’ites, Christians, and Druze.

The state would be based on Syria’s coast, but to be easily accessible by Iran, and to be of logistical use to Russia, it must stretch across the Syrian desert to the Iraqi border, at which point it might as well also include the Druze (and slightly Christian) region in Syria’s south:

Alawite (yellow), Shi’ite (green), Christian (red), and Druze (turquoise) majorities in Syria’s districts (Addai, 2022), laid over population density (WorldPop, 2020). Sunni, Kurdish, Turkic, and Jewish majorities not colored. Proposed borders of a Minority State indicated with a solid line. A Damascus-Homs Corridor, under the Minority State’s control but with free passage for Sunni Syria, traced by dashed line. Post-1967 and likely post-2024 lines of Israeli control indicated with dotted lines.

The Minority State would have a hypothetical maximum population of approximately 5 million, in the implausible scenario that all Syrian Alawites, Shi’ites, Druze, and Christians relocate to the new state, from the rest of Syria and from refuge outside of it: before the war, Syria’s Alawite population was estimated at 10% (of 23 million, i.e., 2.3 million), its Christian population at 5% (1.2 million), its Druze population at 3% (0.7 million), and its Shi’ite population at 2% (0.5 million) (Balanche, 2018, p. 13).

The Minority State would provide Russia with non-NATO access to the Mediterranean and with air and naval bases on the Mediterranean. It would preserve Iran’s access to Shi’ite Lebanon via the most efficient route. And despite being demographically and geographically much smaller than Syria proper, it would potentially be an actually useful ally, if able to make a relatively clean break with the rest of Syria, rather than remaining in some intractable conflict with it like Damascus was.

However, the plausibility of such a separation is unclear, as is the extent to which Syria’s minorities possess the short- and long-term strength and will to pursue it. As of May 2025, events were inconclusive. Widespread ‘offensive’ resistance to HTS has not yet emerged, i.e., Syria has not yet descended into full-scale civil war like Libya or Yemen. Yet HTS has failed to fully subordinate the myriad other rebel groups, sectarian violence has broken out, at least the Kurds and Druze are “defensively” resisting central authority, and it took Libya and Yemen 31 months each to descend into civil war after their governments’ overthrow.

It is certainly of critical importance that the Minority State be supported principally by its own people, not (as the former Syrian government evidently was) by Russia and Iran. Its possibility is mentioned here:

• as preferable to attempting to reestablish a friendly government across all of Syria
• conversely, to ensure that any undertaken effort yields a state from the Mediterranean to Iraq, and that any project unlikely to achieve this (e.g., one restricted to the coast) is eschewed as a largely-pointless waste of resources and a source of continued conflict with Turkiye and the Sunnis
• not to argue that Russia should itself launch such a project, but to argue that Russia should consider supporting such a project—in areas (logistics, air defense, PMCs) where Russia can make a large difference at little cost—if Plan A is unavailable and if Syria’s minorities themselves demonstrate sufficient strength and will.

5. Backup Plans

Regardless of whether Russia selects Plan A or Plan B (or if, as is perhaps more likely, both prove nonviable or excessively costly), there are various other means by which its interests can be secured.

i. Iranian Access to Shi’ite Lebanon

First, regarding Iran’s access to Shi’ite Lebanon, Salafi-Wahhabi (see e.g., Newlee, 2018) Syria will likely have bad relations with Israel. Aside from the obvious ethnic, religious, and ideological sources of hostility, Israel presumably has no intention of returning the Golan Heights and, to the contrary, has only expanded its occupation of Syrian territory and its attacks on Syrian military assets. A Salafi-Wahhabi Syria may therefore become a reluctant or even enthusiastic member of the “Axis of Resistance,” just like Sunni Hamas.

Even if this is not the case, Iran can still get to the Levantine coast via Russian and then Turkish airspace (the latter guaranteed to civilian aircraft by the Montreux Convention), through the Suez Canal (free passage of civilian and military seacraft guaranteed by the Convention of Constantinople), or by going around Africa. It can also get there by air (or by sea and land) via the same route by which Russia can ensure continued access to the Mediterranean: through Africa itself.

ii. Russian Access to Africa and the Mediterranean

Regardless of Plans A and B, Russian access to Africa (including the souvereignist bloc that has swept across its northern half) and to the Mediterranean, not dependent upon Turkiye or Syria, can be retained via Iran.

Aerial and possibly ground passage through Iranian territory (which the Syria corridor required/presupposed in any case), plus aircraft-refueling and port-call rights on Iran’s southern coast, are sufficient for land-sea and aerial access to Africa.

These would, ideally, be guaranteed by some sort of agreement or even treaty, which would not involve any transfer of sovereignty or even management, and (if only for symbolic reasons) should probably provide Iran with identical access to Russian territory and infrastructure. (Russia does not need actual bases, and concerns about the viability of bases in Iran, perhaps related to Russia’s apparently problematic experience of conducting combat operations out of Hamadan (Nadzharov and Meloyan, 2025), are thus irrelevant.)

In the modern era, ships from Iran can reach anywhere on Africa’s eastern coast without difficulty.

As for aerial routes, 5,000km-range flights from (e.g.) Jam (green dot) and Chabahar (red dot) have the following (correspondingly colored) radii (Chabahar’s assumes no overflight of the Arabian Peninsula, thus westward flights initially follow the thinly-traced path along Arabia’s southern coast):

Thus, flights from Iran can reach all of Africa’s east coast (except for South Africa) across the Indian Ocean (international waters). And then, if the destination is Eritrea, Sudan, or Egypt, through the Gulf of Aden (passage guaranteed by custom and UNCLOS Art.38) and the Red Sea (international waters).

Airspace (and in some cases, refueling) rights from just a few states will then be sufficient to get Russian flights to the African interior and to the Mediterranean. (These rights are evidently already available in some cases, as Russian flights were getting from Syria to central and western Africa somehow.) As with Iran, these rights would ideally be guaranteed in treaties, but mostly need not (and ideally would not) involve actual Russian bases (i.e., permanently-stationed personnel, management of installations, or transferred sovereignty). Exceptions might be made, at the host country’s request, when the base would be a burden upon the host or may have to support combat missions.

iii. Bases on the Mediterranean

Additionally, insofar as backups or replacements for Hmeimim and Tartus are needed on the Mediterranean Sea, these probably can be acquired in East Libya (accessible, inter alia, by air from the south/east as described above). In fact, contrary to concerns about East Libya’s ability to host a Russian presence in the face of U.S. pressure (Nadzharov and Meloyan, 2025), an extensive Russian presence has already existed in East Libya for years, including during the Special Military Operation.

Shi’ite Lebanon is a more radical possibility.

Algeria and Egypt are also potential options. While they may have their own concerns about Russian activities and/or about the Cosmopoliberal Bloc’s response to any cooperation with Russia (Nadzharov and Meloyan, 2025), they also: share Russia’s opposition to Salafi-Wahhabi insurgents and terrorists; are aligned with Russia in support for East Libya; are Sunni Arab states whose relations with the U.S. may be made entirely untenable by Israel’s actions; have (in the case of Algeria) historically had cold relations with the U.S. and its allies; and were (in the case of Egypt) betrayed by the U.S. in 2011. Crucially, the U.S. regards both as undemocratic,[17] i.e., bad, meaning that hostile U.S. policy is inevitable insofar as it is not already present (Royce, 2025).

In each case, it would be important to keep the hosting entity in power.

Fortunately, as noted above, the former Syrian government was in an almost uniquely bad position, ethno-confessionally opposed by 75-80% of its population. Algeria, Egypt (aside from its Copts), and Libya are not ethno-confessionally divided. (Although, concerningly, somewhat more than half of Libyans live on the currently West-Libyan-controlled Tripolitanian coast (Libyan Bureau of Statistics and Census, 2020).) And though Shi’ites are only a third of Lebanon’s population, the remainder is split evenly into Sunnis and Christians.

6. Conclusion

In sum, Russia should exclude from its interests the ineffective (e.g., fighting ‘terror’ beyond Russia’s borders), negligible (e.g., the Syrian economy), vacuous (e.g., abstract prestige/influence), and unachievable/obsolete (e.g., protection of Syria’s Orthodox). Instead, it should try to satisfy concrete, substantial, viable interests in a maximally effective manner. In the case of Syria, these interests were and are largely limited to (1) supporting Iran and (2) providing Russia with African access and Mediterranean access/bases.

They would be best satisfied (indeed, better than they were by support of Damascus) through a rapprochement with Turkiye in which Russia recognizes Turkiye’s (now substantially enlarged) sphere of influence in exchange for (1) the right of Russia and Iran to transit through it and (2) Russia’s retention of its naval base at Tartus if no replacement can be found and a permanent Mediterranean fleet is necessary.

Plan B, a Minority State in Syria, should be considered only if (1) Plan A is impossible and Turkish hostility unavoidable, (2) the minorities themselves seem willing and able to bear most of the burden over the long run, (3) a fairly clean break can be made between them and the rest of Syria, i.e., the project will not drag Russia and Iran into an interminable fight against the other 75-80% of Syria’s population, and (4) the Minority State can be extended from the Mediterranean coast to the Iraqi border.

And regardless of whether Russia selects Plan A or B, and especially if both prove unavailable, there are also other means by which Russia can satisfy its interests: (1) facilitating Iranian access to Shi’ite Lebanon, through Russian territory and infrastructure, insofar as this is possible and necessary; (2) accessing Africa via Iran and the Indian Ocean; (3) securing Mediterranean bases (if these are even necessary) in Algeria, East Libya, Egypt, or even Shi’ite Lebanon. Crucially, the first two policies do not require actual bases, but merely Iranian access to the territory/infrastructure of Russia and Russian access to the territory/infrastructure of Iran and various African states, respectively. Reciprocal access between Russia and Iran should probably be formalized, as soon as possible, within the framework of the two countries’ generally strengthening alliance.