Russia’s Syria: A Shift in Strategy Amid Assad’s Fall or a tactical retreat?

• Collapse of Assad’s Regime: Bashar al-Assad and top officials have fled to Moscow, leaving Syria in chaos. Rebel group HTS has taken control, vowing to prosecute regime members for abuses and crimes.
• Power Vacuum and Drug Trade: The fall of Assad and Hezbollah has disrupted Syria’s lucrative captagon trade. Criminal groups and jihadists may exploit this void, with potential involvement from Russian networks like Wagner PMC.
• Russia’s Strategic Withdrawal: Russia’s withdrawal from Syria may be a tactical move to regroup. Syrian factions must act urgently to form a governance mechanism to prevent further conflict and humanitarian crises.

The rapid folding of Bashar al-Asaad’s regime in Damascus has brought about a vacuum of power in Syria. It has also changed the political map of the Middle East for the foreseeable future, which is, as the Middle East teaches us, extremely short.

Asaad and his family have reached Moscow, where they have received asylum, and informal reports indicate many senior members of the Baathist regime, including Asaad’s younger brother, Maher Asaad, have left Syria. In Maher’s case, he is also reported to have reached Moscow. AP reports that over 8,000 Syrian citizens have crossed into Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing, and around 5,000 have been reported to have flown out of Beirut airport. Despite the Lebanese officer responsible for the crossing being sent on holiday due to his links to Maher Assad, it can be assumed that several senior officials of the Assad regime have crossed to Lebanon with false papers and will attempt to reach other destinations—mainly Moscow. Other reports confirm the arrival of officers loyal to Assad in Benghazi, Libya, where they will await transport to Russia.

The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the insurgent group which is credited to have forced Assad from power, Abu Mohammed al-Golani (Ahmed Al-Sharaa), has vowed to go after members of Asaad’s inner circle for human rights abuses, drug trafficking, and other offenses. In most cases, the Alawite regime officials, barely considered Muslim by the Sunni majority, will seek to flee the country also to escape mob justice from the Sunni majority for the draconian fashion by which they ruled with an iron fist.

HTS fighters have found, and claim to have destroyed, a large captagon-producing facility on the outskirts of Damascus. The drug production and smuggling operation was largely run by the dictator’s brother, Maher Asaad, and had turned Syria into a “narco-state.” Captagon is also known as the “jihad drug,” fueling an epidemic of drug abuse in wealthy Gulf states, threatening social peace, wrote Carnegie scholar Hesham Alghannam.

Assad, he wrote, “leveraged Captagon trafficking as a means of exerting pressure on the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world.” 2023 reports state that 80% of the global captagon production was in Syria and exported through the port of Latakia. The global captagon market is estimated to be between $5.7 billion and $57 billion. It is estimated that Syria earned $10 billion annually from the Captagon trade, netting $2.4 billion for the Assad regime.

While other Iranian proxies, especially Hezbollah, controlled logistics and transport of drugs, Asaad’s Syria used the revenues to prop up his government in the 13 years of civil war. The decimation of Hezbollah and the Assad regime leaves a big power vacuum in this organized crime-controlled market where other criminal organizations and jihadi entities may enter to fill the void.

What cannot be ruled out is a role for Russian and Iranian black ops groups, such as the Wagner PMC, in these drug smuggling and logistics activities, which would have been financially very lucrative. It could be expected that Russian criminal organizations will have some role in trying to use leftover Assad influence and networks to keep revenue flowing from Captagon.

Apart from the drug trade, what is indeed surprising is that Russia is withdrawing en masse from Syria, while facilitating the transport of Syrian army loyalists to Moscow.

Elite Losses and Wagner’s Role

Over nine years of intervention in Syria, Russia has suffered significant military losses, including personnel from its most elite units. The BBC has identified 543 Russian military personnel and Wagner PMC operatives killed in Syria between 2015 and 2024. These include members of the Special Operations Forces (SOF), FSB special forces, GRU intelligence officers, and military pilots.

The deaths of 346 Wagner PMC personnel were confirmed through leaked company documents and open sources, with substantial casualties during the 2018 U.S. airstrikes near the Khasham gas fields. These figures highlight the human cost of Russia’s prolonged involvement in Syria, despite official acknowledgment of only 116 military deaths as of 2019.

Satellite Imagery Signals Withdrawal

Recent satellite images from Maxar and BlackSky reveal activity suggesting Russia is withdrawing assets from Syria. At Hmeimim air base in Latakia province, at least two Antonov AN-124 cargo planes were photographed with their nose cones open, preparing to load equipment. Nearby, a Ka-52 attack helicopter and components of an S-400 air defense system were seen dismantled for transport.

Simultaneously, fluctuations in Russian naval presence at the Tartus naval base were observed. Warships disappeared from the port after Bashar al-Assad’s government fell to a rebel offensive, with some vessels temporarily returning before vanishing again. Tartus is Russia’s sole Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and its loss would severely undermine Moscow’s regional strategy.

Reports of Russian military convoys suggest a planned withdrawal. Channel 4 News documented over 150 vehicles moving in an orderly fashion, indicating a possible agreement to allow for an organized exit. However, Russia’s Ministry of Defense has yet to comment on these developments.

The loss of Tartus and Hmeimim would significantly weaken Russia’s ability to project power in the Middle East and Africa. These facilities are vital for military operations and maintaining a warm-water port presence. Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed that Russia is airlifting weaponry out of Syria, though these reports remain unverified.

The Uncertain Future

With Assad’s regime toppled, Russia faces an uncertain future in Syria. Rebel forces now control the provinces surrounding Tartus and Hmeimim, complicating Moscow’s ability to maintain its military footprint. While all indicators point to Moscow’s withdrawal from Syria, the risk is very high that this is just a strategic retreat. The Assad regime is very well funded with drug revenues and is not reported to have lost any senior officials. Gathering all in Moscow, regrouping assets, may allow Moscow the opportunity to change strategy in the Middle East, using its ghost armies. Much as the Baathist officers acted as a stay-behind force in Iraq after the fall of the Saddam government, the Assad regime may, with Moscow’s assistance, start a proxy war with HTS and other Islamist groups.

Chaos on the ground is immense. Erdogan’s paranoia will force him to engage with Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops, keeping them engaged in maintaining the security of the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria). Israel is busy creating a buffer zone around itself and has destroyed any military infrastructure that could be of remote use to the new rising powers in Damascus. The HTS-led coalition is fragile, and it is easy for it to be tempted into a civil war for power and control of territory. The Alawite-majority areas, which will continue to remain loyal to Assad, therefore remain the country’s Achilles’ heel, which can be exploited by a Russia-supported, Wagner PMC-led ghost force, which could attempt to keep Syria in conflict until it can be taken over again.

To avoid this happening, it is essential for the various Syrian actors to form an immediate joint governance mechanism to sort out differences and discuss the future of the country, without waiting for external powers like the U.S., UK, Turkey, Russia, and Iran to create such a mechanism. Russia’s withdrawal from Syria may be the symptom of a more brutal war to come; prevention is possible and could reduce the humanitarian disaster that will follow.