The sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December 2024 brought an end to over 50 years of brutal Assad family rule. It may also mark the end of an even longer status quo in which Russia and the Soviet Union preceding it was Syria’s leading go-to supplier for military hardware.
The overthrow of Assad through Islamist-led opposition forces did not result in quick demands through the new Russian army government in Syria to abandon its two coastal bases. Still, Russia has lowered its presence and withdrew weapons and complex warships from those bases. The Tartus. La naval base remains the only base of its kind that Russia has outside the gates of the former Soviet Union.
In general, the long term of the Russian army in Syria seems gloomy. The new Syrian government has canceled a lease for Tartus, and the recent bearing of two Russian ships there suggests that it has already begun a complete evacuation. And now that Turkey, the regional heavyweight, “will now influence diplomatic, economically and militarily in the long term of its neighbor,” according to a recent reuters report, the long -standing role of Moscow as the main provider of Syrian weapons of Syria possibly also He would have reached his last days.
If this were the case, it would mark the end of an era of only about 70 years.
“Between 1956 and 1991, Syria gained some 5,000 tanks, 1,200 fighter jets, 70 ships and many other systems and weapons from Moscow worth more than $26 billion, according to Russian estimates,” a recent BBC report noted. “Much of this is in favor of Syria’s wars with Israel, which has largely explained the country’s foreign policy since it won independence from France in 1946. “
Indeed, much to Israel’s chagrin, in all of its wars against Syria and clashes with the Syrian military, it encountered an overwhelmingly Soviet-armed adversary. In the June 1967 and subsequent October 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars, Syria fought Israel with MiG-15s, MiG-17s, and MiG-21s in the air and T-55 and T-62 tanks on the ground. Nevertheless, in 1967 it lost the Golan Heights to Israel and failed in its attempt to reclaim that strategic territory in 1973.
Syria will continue to rearm with Soviet weapons and ammunition throughout the remainder of the 1970s to rebuild the losses caused by those primary wars and modernize its armed forces. According to the International Peace Research Institute’s extensive database on arms transfers in Stockholm, Syrian acquisitions around this time included more T-62 tanks, new MIG-23 FLOGGER fighters, and S-75 air defenses (SA-2 ). In 1980, Syria secured delivery of the MIG-25 Foxbat, the world’s fastest hunter at the time, and T-72 tanks, of which it received more than 1,200 by the end of the decade. (From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union also provided the small Syrian army with the elegance of the OSA, known as the 205 Moskit mission, in Soviet service. )
In many ways, they would see the delivery of weapons from Moscow to peak Syria.
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 that setback, Syria continued acquiring large quantities of Soviet arms. The Reagan administration expressed concerns in 1983 over Soviet military advisors in Syria and the delivery of long-range S-200 (SA-5 Gammon) surface-to-air missiles to the Syrian military. The SIPRI database notes that the delivery of 11 S-200 Angara systems from 1982 to 1986 was “in reaction to Israeli success in attacks on Syrian forces in Lebanon” and that they were “manned by Soviet troops until 1985.”
Throughout 1985, Syria positioned S-75s near the Lebanese border, alarming Israel, which protested that such systems could threaten its common surveillance flights over Lebanon. Claiming that Israel was making additional plans in army action, Syria said it was in a position for combat and, referring to its superpower as an arms supplier, warned that it would not fight this war alone.
The Syrian Defense Minister claimed twice in the same year that the Soviet Union had already agreed to nuclear-arm Damascus when Israel introduced a nuclear strike against Syria. One Soviet official, predictably, bordered on such claims as “pure nonsense. ” (Damascus probably made up for the defeat of the Beqaa Valley and the bombing of its positions in Lebanon through the US Navy the following year after 241 US service members were infamously killed in the barracks bombing Beyrut sailors).
An article in Jane’s defense weekly in 1986 noted that giant imports of Soviet weapons from Syria made it a “formidable fighting machine,” but resulted in Damascus accumulating giant debts that it could not repay. Moreover, this intensification was not enough to triumph over Israel in any other war.
Syria continued to improve its air defenses with Soviet imports from the 1980s, receiving BUK-1M and OSA surface-to-air missile systems. It also purchased a fleet of fourth-generation MIG-29 fighter jets from Fulcrum and Su-24 bombers. He built a significant surface-to-surface missile arsenal of Scuds and SS-21s. In particular, Moscow denied Damascus the highest-ranking SS-23 (OTR-23 OKA).
By the end of the decade, there were signs that the culmination of military ties between Moscow and Damascus had passed. The Soviet Union announced it would consider cutting military aid to Syria, noting that Damascus’ “ability to pay” for weapons was “not unlimited” but was under pressure and sought to maintain cordial relations. Syrian officials have cited the U. S. military’s generous aid to Israel when they appealed to Moscow for help.
A dark incident also showed the tensions just below the surface of the relationship. One morning in 1989, two Syrian helicopters shot at a cruise of the Soviet Navy docked in the Syrian coastal city of Latakie, killing two Soviet sailors. Although the incident is still controversial, an analyst has opined that the moment could have indicated that Damascus did not point out so subtly his misfortune with certain aspects of the relations with his Soviet pattern 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.
Notable Soviet-era arms deals have been frozen and the cash-strapped Russian Federation has temporarily proposed a new relationship with Syria. Under this revised date, Moscow would only sell defensive weapons in Damascus. Furthermore, it would now require payments in hard currency. It is from a time when Soviet ideology prevailed over market principles, when it treated its consumers with the nearest Arab weapons.
Reports emerged in 1992 claiming Russia and Syria concluded a $2 billion deal signed in 1991, which included advanced Su-27 Flanker fighters and S-300 air defense missile systems. That deal never went ahead.
When President Hafez al-Assad visited Moscow in July 1999, he proposed a $2 billion deal including Su-27s and S-300s. The U.S. warned Russian President Boris Yeltsin that it might cancel $50 million in aid if Moscow made new arms deals with Damascus.
Syria was never given the elegant Su-27 or the complicated S-300, and in the 1990s and 2000s it only received anti-tank missiles and portable missiles on the surface.
Russia supplied Syria with 1,000 of its new, powerful Kornet anti-tank guided missiles in 1999, the largest arms deal implemented between Moscow and Damascus since the Soviet collapse at the time. The Syrian Army would receive approximately 1,500 more Kornet missiles by 2006, according to the figures in the SIPRI database.
Russia reached a deal to sell Syria Igla (SA-18) man-portable air defense missiles in 2005. In order to assuage American and Israeli concerns that Syria could transfer these MANPADs to groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Moscow clarified that these missiles were only for the Strelets system. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov emphasized this in March 2005. “It is not a manpack air defense system, which is portable,” he said. “Strelets is a rather massive and complicated system not to be carried in the mountains.” (Russia even shared documents with Israel the following month showing how the Strelets had several Igla missiles designed only for firing from its motorized launcher.)
Syria also ordered Pantsir-S1 and Buk-M2 medium-range air defenses and Yakhont supersonic anti-ship missiles by the end of the 2000s. Unsurprisingly, Israel protested many of these deals and unsuccessfully tried to convince Russia to cancel them.
Many of those new systems began to arrive, while the country descended into a devastating civil war when Bashar al-Assad violently suppressed a nonviolent protest motion encouraged through the Arab Spring at the point in the region in 2011. This clash that follows would last much longer than a decade and leave at least 500,000 Syrians dead.
During that war, the Assad regime turned its Soviet-era military hardware and newer Russian-made missile systems inward, destroying whole cities. At the same time, Syria’s military hardware did little to defend the country from external threats. Most notably, Syria’s air defenses failed to hinder Israel’s air campaign, which mainly targeted Iran-backed elements in the war-torn country throughout that war. (Israel did lose an F-16 in February 2018 after the pilots ejected after coming under fire from a Syrian S-200 as they were returning from a strike mission. The fighter crashed on the Israeli side of the border, and both crew survived.)
This Israeli campaign would particularly degrade the air defenses of Syria and prevent them from being fulfilled their declared objective of modernizing them. Russian and Syrian state media reported that the most recent Syrian systems, namely, the Parsir-S1 and the BUK-M2, were able to intercept the without exit introduced introduced from the Israeli air.
Another debatable agreement between Russia and Syria for Israel is the 2010 order for S-300 high-altitude air defense formulas, which were scheduled for delivery in mid-2014 and were more complex than any other formula Syria had. Russia will later deliver an S-300 to Syria in 2018, but in particularly other circumstances.
Russia intervened directly in the Syrian civil war in September 2015, after Assad lost a lot of land in front of its armed parts in conflict and seems to be on the verge of defeat. The intervention of the Russian army gradually helped the Assad regime, which also benefited from important Iranian militias, to repel the advances of the armed opposition and to absolutely devastate the east of Alepp with a fierce crusade of bombing in 2016.
During its deployment in Syria, which lasted just under a decade, Russia supplied the depleted and fatigued Syrian military with some hardware. It delivered about a dozen T-90S main battle tanks in 2015, followed by larger deliveries of older, albeit modernized, T-62M tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles.
A photo taken on March 4, 2017 shows a Syrian Army T-62 tank at the destroyed site of the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria. Syrian troops subsidized by Russian aircraft completed the recapture of the historic city of Palmyra from fighters of the Islamic State (IS) organization on March 2, 2017. (Photo by LOUAI BESHARA/AFP Getty Images)
The “Syrian” S-300 was only delivered in 2018 after a Syrian S-200 mistakenly shot down a Russian transport aircraft while firing at nearby Israeli fighter jets carrying out airstrikes on its territory. Russia blamed Israel for the incident and immediately delivered the system. However, there was a catch. The strategic system remained firmly under Russian military control and was Syrian in name only. Adding insult to injury, Russia withdrew it from the country altogether in 2022 as it committed more resources to its depleting war in Ukraine.
While Russia reportedly delivered the modernized MIG-29 to Syria in June 2020, this is most likely a policy for the secret delivery of anonymous Fulcrums in Libya, which stopped at the main Syrian Russian airbase, Hmeimim, in the direction of Al Jufra in Libya. Rare photographs of the Syrian MIG-29 surfaced last month, with obviously visual symptoms of immense wear and tear.
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 immediate cave of the Syrian regime in December 2024 and the evacuation of Bashar al-Assad to Moscow through Hmeimim explained the end of the former Syrian army serviceman. Parts of an army arsenal that took more than 50 years to build in a matter of days with impunity. The vital assets of Syria’s vital army, adding its MIG-29 fleet, went up in smoke, and all of its OSA-class missile ships were attacked while it was still docked in the harbor.
With Russia’s days in the country likely numbered, it is unlikely that Syria’s new rulers will rely on Syria for their weapons, as the Assad dynasty has done during his rule. They might not even look to Russia as their main weaponry. supplier and completely break with this decades-long prestige quo. Instead of trying to rebuild the old army, Syria may also start recovering weapons from Turkey and other countries in the region.
Syria will most likely focus on internal security for the foreseeable future. Consequently, Turkish-built drones and armored vehicles could meet its more immediate requirements. Turkey has used its homegrown weapons systems in Syria many times before, mostly against Syrian Kurdish-led forces but also, in one notable operation in Idlib in 2020, against the former regime to devastating effect.
Whatever Damascus’s final long-term resolution, it already seems clear that Russia’s time as its main arms supplier ended ignominiously.
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