The cave of the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 ended more than 50 years in the Brutal Assad family. It can also mark the end of an even longer prestige quo in which Russia and the Soviet Union precede the main provider of captivating army devices in Syria.
The overthrow of Assad by Islamist-led opposition forces did not result in immediate demands by the new authorities for the Russian military in Syria to vacate its two coastal bases. Still, Russia has drawn down its presence and withdrawn advanced weaponry and warships from these bases. The Tartus naval base remains the only base of its kind Russia has outside the former Soviet Union.
Overall, the Russian army’s long run in Syria looks bleak. The new Syrian government has canceled a lease for the Tartus, and the recent docking of two Russian ships suggests that a full evacuation may have already begun. And with Turkey’s regional heavyweight now in a position to influence its neighbor’s long careers, economically and militarily, according to a recent Reuters report, Moscow’s longstanding role as Syria’s top arms supplier would have arguably reached its final days as well.
If this is the case, it would mark the end of an era that covers almost 70 years.
“Between 1956 and 1991, Syria won about 5,000 tanks, 1,200 combat aircraft, 70 ships and many other Moscow systems and weapons value more than $ 26 billion, according to Russian estimates,” said a recent BBC report. “Many of this in favor of Syrian wars with Israel, who largely explained the country’s foreign policy since he received his independence from France in 1946”.
In fact, to Israel’s disgust, in all his wars opposed to Syria and clashes with the Syrian army, he found a massively Soviet adversary. In June 1967 and October 1973, the following Arab-Israeli Wars , however, in 1967, he lost the highs of the Golán opposed Israel and failed in their attempt in this strategic territory in 1973.
Syria would continue to rebuild with Soviet apparatus and munitions in the 1970s to rebuild its losses from those wonderful wars and modernize its armed forces. According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute’s vast weapons movement database, Syrian acquisitions at the time included more T-62 tanks, new MIG-23 fighters, and S-Air 75 (SA-2) defenses. In 1980, Syria received delivery of Foxbats from the MIG-25, the fastest fighter in the Global at the time, and T-72 tanks, receiving more than 1,200 of the latter until the end of the Decadearray (from the mid-1960ss. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union also provided Syria in Syria with more than a dozen ships of OSA elegance missiles, known as Project 205 Moskit in Soviet service).
It would be, in many ways, the delivery of Moscow’s weapons to Syria Peak.
In 1982, after Syria deployed some of its best Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, Israel conducted an unprecedented destruction of enemy air defenses operation, removing that strategic threat from Lebanon, which it invaded that year. Subsequent dogfights would see Israel’s new American-made F-15 and F-16s shoot down over 80 Syrian fighters without a single loss in return. The operation again underscored the qualitative advantage Israel’s American-made weaponry had over Syria’s Soviet arsenal.
Despite this setback, Syria continued to win giant amounts of Soviet weapons. Reagan’s management expressed its considerations in 1983 about the advisors of the Soviet army to Syria and the delivery of S-200 long-range missiles (SA-5 gammon) to the Syrian army. The SIPRI database indicates that the delivery of 11 S-200 S-200 systems from 1982 to 1986 “in reaction to good Israeli fortune in the attacks opposed to the Syrian forces in Lebanon” and that they were “used through Soviet troops until ‘in 1985 “.
At the end of 1985, Syria located S-75 near the Lebanese border, alarming Israel, who protested that these systems can threaten their common surveillance flights over Lebanon. Stating that Israel planned a new action of the army opposed to it, Syria said that in a position for war and, in a reference oblique to its superpower weapons provider, he warned that he would not fight this war alone.
The Syrian Defense Minister claimed twice in the same year that the Soviet Union had already agreed to obtain nuclear weapons from Damascus on the occasion that Israel introduced a nuclear attack on Syria. A Soviet official brushed against these statements as “pure nonsense. “(Damascus probably compensated for the defeat of the Bekaa Valley and the bombardment of its positions in Lebanon by the U. S. Navy. )U. S. The following year after 241 U. S. service members were infamously killed in the bombing of the Beyrut Marine Barracks. )
A weekly Defense report by Jane in 1986 pointed out that the giant imports of Syria’s Soviet weapons made it a “formidable combat machine”, but resulted in the accumulation of giant debts that may not pay, the accumulation It was not enough to be triumphant over Israel in some other war.
Syria continued to improve its air defenses with Soviet imports from the 1980s, receiving BUK-1M and OSA Surface-à-Air missile systems. It also purchased a fleet of fourth-generation Fulcrum Fulcrum aircraft and Su-24 bombers. He built an arsenal of surface-surface missiles from SCUDS and SS-21. In particular, Moscow denied Damascus the SS-23 in a longer diversity (OTR-23 OKA).
As the decade ended, there were signs that the high point of military ties between Moscow and Damascus had passed. The Soviet Union announced it would consider reducing military aid to Syria, noting Damascus’s “ability to pay” for arms was “not unlimited,” but underlined it wanted to retain cordial relations. Syrian officials often cited generous American military aid to Israel when they requested assistance from Moscow.
A dark incident also referred to tensions just below the surface of the relationship. One morning in 1989, two Syrian helicopters shot at a Soviet army cruise addressed in the Syrian coastal city of Latakie, killing two Soviet sailors. Although the express cause of the incident is still disputed, an analyst said that the moment would have informed that Damascus did not sign his misfortune with safe facets of relations with his Soviet boss at that time.
Whatever happened, the Soviet Union was by then not long for this world. The Berlin Wall came down overnight in November 1989, and the entire polity, Syria’s superpower backer, ceased to exist by the end of December 1991.
Pending Soviet-era arms deals were frozen, and the cash-strapped Russian Federation temporarily proposed a rendezvous with Syria. Under the terms of the revised appointments, Moscow would only sell defensive weapons to Damascus. In addition, it would now require bills in hard currency. The days were the days when Soviet ideology eschewed market principles when dealing with its nearest Arab arms customer.
The reports arose in 1992, which Russia and Syria concluded an agreement of $ 2 billion signed in 1991, which included complex fighters of Flanker Su-27 and S-300 Air missile missile systems. This agreement has never continued.
When President Hafez Al-Assad visited Moscow in July 1999, he proposed a $ 2 billion agreement added SU-27 and S-300. The United States warned Russian President Boris Yeltsin to cancel $ 50 million in help if Moscow made new arms agreements with Damascus.
Syria never received the elegant Su-27 or the complicated S-300, receiving only anti-tank missiles and portable missiles on the surface in the 1990s and 2000s.
Russia Syria 1,000 of its new guided missiles against Kornet banks in 1999, the largest weapons agreement implemented between Moscow and Damascus from the Soviet cave at that time. The Syrian army would obtain approximately 1,500 Kornet missiles until 2006, according to the SIPRI database figures.
Russia has concluded a deal to sell man-portable air defense missiles through Guy in Syria (SA-18) in 2005. To assuage American and Israeli concerns that Syria may move those manpads to the Strelet formula. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov said as much in March 2005. “It’s not an air defense formula from Guypack, which is portable,” he said. “Strelets is a big, confusing formula that shouldn’t be transported in the mountains. “(Russia even shared documents with Israel the following month that surfaced how the types had several IGLA missiles designed only to get from their powered launcher. )
Syria has also ordered aerial defenses in medium-range Gent-S1 to cancel them.
Many of these new systems began to arrive while the country reduced to a devastating civil war when Basha It will continue much more than a decade and leaves at least 500,000 Syrians who died.
During that war, the Assad regime remodeled its army hardware of the Soviet era and the new Russian missile manufacturing missile system, destroying entire cities. At the same time, Syrian army hardware has not done little to protect the country opposed to external threats. Syrian’s aerial defenses did not hinder the Israel air campaign, which went mainly to elements backed by Iran in the country devastated by war that the war (Israel lost an F-16 in February 2018 after the pilots were expelled After being criticized by a Sirio S-200 S-200 as he returned from a strike mission.
This Israeli crusade would significantly degrade the air defenses of Syria and save Iran to achieve its objective expressed and they. Reports in Russian and Syrian state media said that the new Syrian systems, namely, Page-S1 and Buk-M2, have controlled to intercept the ammunition of the confrontation introduced through Israeli air.
Another litigious agreement of Russia-Siria for Israel the 2010 order of the S-300 air defenses to the maximum altitude, which would be delivered until mid-2014 and were much more complex than any other formula than Syria. Later, Russia would deliver an S-300 to Syria in 2018, but obviously in other circumstances.
Russia intervened directly in the Syrian Civil War in September 2015, after Assad lost substantial ground to his armed opponents and looked on the brink of defeat. Russia’s military intervention gradually helped the Assad regime, which also had significant Iranian support in the form of militias, repel the armed opposition’s advances and utterly devastate east Aleppo in a ferocious bombing campaign in 2016.
During its deployment to Syria, which lasted only a decade, Russia provided equipment to the exhausted and tired Syrian army. and BMP-1 anti-infantry fighting vehicles.
A picture taken on March 4, 2017 shows a Syrian army T-62 tank at the damaged site of the ancient … [+] city of Palmyra in central Syria. Syrian troops backed by Russian jets completed the recapture of the historic city of Palmyra from Islamic State (IS) group fighters on March 2, 2017. (Photo by LOUAI BESHARA/AFP via Getty Images)
The S-300 “Syrian” was only delivered until 2018 after a Syrian S-200 was mistakenly shot down on a Russian shipping plane, as it was firing near Israeli fighter jets that caused movements to soar on its territory. Russia accused Israel of being guilty for the incident and promptly handed over the formula. There was a problem. The strategic formula remained firmly under the Russian army and was only Syria’s in name. Adding insult to insult, Russia absolutely withdrew him from the country in 2022, while involving more resources in its war in Ukraine.
Although Russia allegedly delivered MiG-29 modernized to Syria in June 2020, it is probably the maximum a policy for the secret delivery of Fulcrum not marked in Libya, which stopped in the main Syrian air of Russia, Hmeimim, on the way to To the minstrel in Libya. The rare photographs of the MIG-29 Syrians emerged last month, with obviously visual symptoms of immense wear.
The last two Russian arms deliveries to Syria indexed in the SIPRI database were since 2021 and consisted of 4 helicopters in mid-24p and 50 R-73 short-range air missiles for MIG-29s. A few weeks before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it conducted a joint air patrol with the Syrian Air Force, adding along the Eufrate River and Syria’s Golan Heights border with Israel. Obviously, it was an attempt to demonstrate about the country’s airspace, which, in retrospect, was still largely symbolic.
The swift collapse of the Syrian regime in December 2024 and Bashar al-Assad’s evacuation to Moscow via Hmeimim simultaneously spelled the end of the old Syrian military. Sensing a historical opportunity, Israel swooped in with hundreds of airstrikes, destroying the remaining components of a military arsenal that took over 50 years to build in a matter of days with complete impunity. Syria’s most important military assets, including its MiG-29 fleet, went up in smoke, and all its Osa-class missile boats were sunken while still moored at port.
With the days of Russia in the country probably numbered, it turns out that Syria’s new leadership will probably depend on weapons as the Assad dynasty has done during the duration of its rule. Possibly they would not even look for Russia as a weapon supplier and take a complete rest of this prestige of decades.
Syria will probably be the maximum in internal security in the foreseeable future. Therefore, drones and armored cars built through Turkish can meet your requirements faster. Turkey used its local weapons systems in Syria several times before, basically opposed to forces led through Syrian Kurds, but also, in one notable operation in Idlib in 2020, opposed to the old regime to devastating effect.
Whatever Damascus is despite everything to do so in the long run, it is already evident that Russia’s days of serving as the first arms supplier ended up ignoring.
A community. Many voices. Create a lazy account to pry your thoughts.
Our network is attached to other people through open and considered conversations. We need our readers to prove their reviews and exchange concepts and made in a space.
To do this, follow the publication regulations the situations of use of our site. We have summarized some of those key regulations below. In other words, keep it civil.
Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:
User accounts will be blocked if we become aware or that users are compromised:
So how can you be a difficult user?
Thanks for reading the guidelines of our community. Read the complete list of publication regulations discovered in the terms of use of our site.