Russia is moving vessels from its naval base in Syria amid the escalating insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it has been reported, after Moscow is said to have shifted much of its Black Sea Fleet from its hub in Crimea earlier this year.
The Syrian port of Tartus has been a key hub for Russian vessels for more than five decades and has grown in importance since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, giving Moscow a Mediterranean presence and bulwark against NATO.
The port in Tartus hosts two Russian Gorskhov class frigates, one Grigorovich class frigate, two auxiliaries and an Improved-Kilo class submarine, according to Naval News.
However, open-source analyst MT Anderson posted on X, formerly Twitter, satellite imagery from November 30 and December 3 that it said showed that Moscow had removed all its vessels.
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Because the Montreux Convention enforced by Ankara prevents Russian warships passing through the Turkish straits, Moscow is likely to redeploy the vessels to its bases in northwestern Russia and Kaliningrad, which borders the Baltic Sea, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment by email.
The apparent exodus of Russian vessels follows Moscow responding to Ukrainian drone strikes on its Black Sea Fleet by relocating many warships from the naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, to Novorossiysk in Russia’s Krasnodar region in July. In October, a Russian-installed senator for Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region admitted that Russian warships had left the port on the occupied peninsula.
The ISW said Monday that the relocation of Russian ships from Syria may signal that Putin does not intend to send significant reinforcements to support Assad, who faces an insurgency led by the Sunni Islamist rebels Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Putin has been a key ally for Assad, helping him during the Syrian Civil War, deploying planes, troops and equipment that bombarded Aleppo in 2016 and kept the Syrian president in power.
After the civil war reignited last week when Islamist-led insurgents captured the city of Aleppo and villages in Idlib province, Putin stepped in to help again and Russian aerial bombardments have targeted the rebels.
“Russian air power, decisive in tipping the balance of power in the regime’s favor, is occupied in Ukraine,” Bilal Sukkar, senior associate at geopolitical and cyber risk consultancy S-RM, told Newsweek. “The Syrian regime, exhausted by sanctions and an economic crisis, will need to calibrate between its military reliance on a weakened Russia and Iran to halt the rebel advances.”
However, in the latest stage of Syria’s civil war, questions remain over what military support Putin can provide, given Moscow’s focus on the war against Ukraine and wider regional hostilities involving Israel, Iran and Hezbollah in Iran.
“The Assad regime will attempt to persuade the Russians to provide backing that will be key in the regime’s counter-offensive against the latest rebel advances in northern Syria, but the Russians will be stretched thin,” said Rateb Atassi, senior associate at S-RM.
