Will Assad’s defeat be Putin’s Waterloo?

The Assad regime in Syria has become a casualty of Moscow’s increasingly desperate efforts in Ukraine, and its collapse is a strategic and operational blow that undermines the narrative of Russia as ascendant, Kyiv as doomed, and Vladimir Putin as strategic mastermind.

Russian forces had been fighting for Assad since at least late 2015, when Moscow decided to intervene in the Syrian civil war on behalf of a family regime it had supported with military aid since the 1950s. Putin also sought to retain access to the port of Tartus, home to Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union.

During the civil war, Russia’s direct military engagement consisted mostly of airstrikes on opponents of the Syrian regime. Moscow also dispatched a limited number of armored forces, air defense units, and infantry to the wartorn country, but these mostly just protected its air force assets. More significant was the deployment of thousands of armed men employed by Russian private military companies such as the Wagner Group. They conducted assault operations with Syrian units and were instrumental to Assad’s success in the late 2010s.

In the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow began to shift some of its regular troops and private mercenaries from Syria to the unexpectedly difficult war a thousand miles to the north. Putin may have regarded this as a low-risk move that would help him overpower Ukrainian resistance.

Instead, it helped seal Assad’s fate. As the Syrian rebellion gained pace in recent weeks, Russia reportedly sent some of its mercenaries back to support the regime. It was too little, too late.

The military implications for Russia are dramatic. The loss of the Tartus naval base will sharply decrease Moscow’s military power in the region. Only a handful of warships were stationed at the base, but Russia had since 2017 been building up the facility’s capacity to repair, supply, and maintain vessels. By enabling warships to operate for longer periods farther from their homeports, Russia was poised to challenge NATO’s dominance of the Mediterranean through shipborne cruise missiles and air defenses—and even extend its influence across North Africa and the Horn of Africa.

The strategic implications are likely to reach even farther. The dominant narrative of the strategic competition between Moscow and the West this year has been one of Russian ascendance. At the center of that narrative is Russia’s slow but steady gains on the battlefields of Ukraine. While the Kremlin has unflinchingly sacrificed tens of thousands of troops per month for incremental advances, there are serious questions about the durability of the U.S. commitment to Kyiv and longstanding doubts about Europe’s ability to fill the gap should the new administration withdraw its support. Other events have helped painted a picture of liberal democracy in retreat and Russia’s brand of authoritarianism on the rise: efforts in Georgia to derail the country’s EU and NATO aspirations, the unexpected success of a pro-Russian political outsider in Romanian elections, and the rise of pro-Russian extremists in Germany, France, and elsewhere. 

Assad’s demise, however, deals Putin a major geopolitical blow, casting doubt on his leadership and disincentivizing other countries from aligning with Moscow. It undermines the narrative of Russian ascendance, and joins other evidence of Moscow’s increasingly difficult slog. For example, Russia’s vaunted war economy faces growing headwinds as the ruble plunges in value, the labor market tightens, and inflation rises past 8 percent. In terms of war materiel, it appears that Russian forces may be scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Soviet-era equipment it has relied upon in its war against Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Russian casualties in Ukraine of between 1,300 and 1,800 per day in November are the highest yet in nearly three years of war, compelling Moscow to bring in North Korean mercenaries to fill critical functions while offering ever-higher enlistment bonuses at home that further strain government finances. And late this week, European leaders announced their willingness to step in with additional funding for Ukraine if the United States withdraws support.

With Russia’s loss of its principal client regime in the Middle East, the narrative of Moscow’s ascendancy in 2024 is beginning to look like more fiction than fact.

John R. Deni is a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a senior fellow at the NATO Defence College. The views expressed are his own.