Vladimir Putin will now have to repair Russia’s reputation as an ally after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, according to UK intelligence.
After 50 years of the Assad’s family’s iron rule and 13 years of civil war, Syrian rebels ousted the authoritarian leader last weekend.
It came as a major humiliation to the Russian president, who propped Assad’s regime up for the last decade so that the Kremlin could establish a foothold in the Middle East and easily access Africa with two military bases in Syria.
Moscow failed to help Assad fight off the rebellion this time though, as all of its resources are focused on seizing more Ukrainian land.
Putin is now offering Assad asylum in Russia – but Putin has not scheduled any kind of meeting with him, according to the Kremlin, amid speculation that Moscow blames the ousted Syrian leader for his own fall.
In its latest update on X, the UK’s ministry of defence (MoD), claimed Russia will now have to work to fix its image as an ally.
“In the short term, Russia will highly likely seek to repair its reputation as a reliable partner and engage diplomatically with all relevant actors involved, in efforts to ensure security guarantees for its military bases,” the MoD said.
Moscow is negotiating with Syrian rebels, Turkey and Iran to try and retain control over its two bases in Syria – the naval base at Tartus and its airbase at Khmeimim – after temporarily abandoning them.
“The collapse of the Assad regime has almost certainly increased the risk to the security of these assets,” the British intelligence officers said.
The MoD continued: “Russian officials almost certainly consider the collapse of the Assad regime, its former Syrian ally, to be both detrimental to its regional strategic interests and to its image as a security guarantor.”
Even so, the Ukraine conflict is Moscow’s “primary concern,” according to the MoD, which most likely “degraded Russia’s ability and capacity to keep the Assad regime in power.”
Russian military bloggers were quick to condemn the fall of Assad earlier this week, saying his decline is “also our defeat”.
However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov tried to distance Russia from Syria earlier this week, saying Moscow completed any missions in the war-torn country a decade ago.
As reported by the Russian state news agency TASS, Peskov said: “A while ago, Russia helped the Syrian Arab Republic in combating terrorists and ensuring stability when the situation posed a threat to the entire region. We put in significant effort toward that goal. Russia completed its mission at that point.
“Afterward, it was the Assad government that took charge in its own country, striving to ensure development, but unfortunately, the situation reached the point it did.”