Syrians eye future without Russia, but Moscow still hopes to stay

For years Russia and Syria had been key companions – Moscow gained entry to Mediterranean air and sea bases whereas Damascus obtained navy help for its battle in opposition to insurgent forces.

Now, after the autumn of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, many Syrians need to see Russian forces go away however their interim authorities says it’s open to additional cooperation.

“Russia’s crimes right here had been indescribable,” says Ahmed Taha, a insurgent commander in Douma, six miles north-east of the capital Damascus.

Town was as soon as a affluent place in a area often called the “bread basket” of Damascus. And Ahmed Taha was as soon as a civilian, working as a tradesman when he took up arms in opposition to the Assad regime following the brutal suppression of protests in 2011.

Total residential districts in Douma now lie in ruins after a number of the fiercest preventing in Syria’s nearly 14-year civil warfare.

Moscow entered this battle in 2015 to help the regime when it was shedding floor. Russia’s Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov later claimed that, on the time of the intervention, Damascus was simply weeks away from being overrun by rebels.

The Syrian operation confirmed the ambition of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to be taken extra significantly after the widespread worldwide condemnation of his annexation of Crimea.

Moscow claimed to have examined 320 completely different weapons in Syria.

It additionally secured 49-year leases on two navy bases on the Mediterranean coast – the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim air base. This allowed the Kremlin to quickly increase its affect in Africa, serving as a spring board for Russian operations in Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Regardless of the help of Russia and Iran, Assad couldn’t forestall his regime from collapsing. However Moscow supplied refuge to him and his household.

Now, many Syrian civilians and insurgent fighters see Russia as an confederate of the Assad regime that helped destroy their homeland.

“The Russians got here to this nation and helped the tyrants, oppressors, and invaders,” says Abu Hisham, as he celebrated the autumn of the regime in Damascus.

The Kremlin has all the time denied that, saying it solely focused jihadist teams like IS or al-Qaeda.

However the United Nations and human rights teams accused the regime and Russia of committing warfare crimes.

In 2016, throughout an assault on densely populated Jap Aleppo, Syrian and Russian forces carried out relentless air strikes, “claiming a whole lot of lives and lowering hospitals, colleges and markets to rubble,” in keeping with a UN report.

In Aleppo, Douma and elsewhere, the regime forces besieged rebel-held areas, reducing off meals and drugs provides, and proceeded to bomb them till armed opposition teams surrendered.

Russia additionally negotiated ceasefires and offers for the give up of rebel-held cities and cities, corresponding to Douma in 2018.

Ahmed Taha was among the many rebels there who agreed to give up in change for protected passage out of town following a five-year siege by the Syrian military.

He returned to Douma in December as part of the insurgent offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its chief Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“We’re again dwelling despite Russia, despite the regime and all those that supported it,” says Taha.

He has little doubt the Russians ought to go away: “For us, Russia is an enemy.”

It is a sentiment echoed by many individuals we converse to.

Even leaders of Syria’s Christian communities, who Russia vowed to guard, say they’d little assist from Moscow.

In Bab Touma, the traditional Christian quarter of Damascus, the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church says: “We didn’t have the expertise of Russia or anyone else from the skin world defending us.”

“The Russians had been right here for their very own advantages and targets,” Ignatius Aphrem II tells the PJDM.

Different Syrian Christians had been much less diplomatic.

“Once they got here to start with, they stated: ‘We got here right here that can assist you,'” says a person known as Assad. “However as an alternative of serving to us, they destroyed Syria much more.”

Sharaa, now Syria’s de facto chief, stated in a PJDM interview last month that he would not rule out permitting the Russians to remain, and he described relations between the 2 nations as “strategic”.

Moscow seized on his phrases, with international minister Lavrov agreeing Russia “had a lot in widespread with our Syrian buddies”.

However untangling the ties in a post-Assad future is probably not simple.

Rebuilding Syria’s navy would require both a very new begin or a continued reliance on Russian provides, which might imply a minimum of some form of relationship between the 2 nations, says Turki al-Hassan, a defence analyst and retired Syrian military common.

Syria’s navy cooperation with Moscow predates the Assad regime, Hassan says. Nearly all of the gear it has was produced by the Soviet Union or Russia, he explains.

“From its inception, the Syrian military has been armed with Jap Bloc weapons.”

Between 1956 and 1991 Syria obtained some 5,000 tanks, 1,200 fighter plane, 70 ships and plenty of different techniques and weapons from Moscow price over $26bn (£21bn), in keeping with Russian estimates.

Quite a lot of this was in help of Syria’s wars with Israel, which has largely outlined the nation’s international coverage because it gained independence from France in 1946.

Greater than half of that sum was left unpaid when the Soviet Union collapsed however in 2005 president Putin wrote off 73% of the debt.

For now, Russian officers have taken a conciliatory however cautious strategy in the direction of the interim rulers who toppled Russia’s long-standing ally.

Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow’s UN envoy, stated latest occasions had marked a brand new part within the historical past of what he known as “brotherly Syrian individuals”. He stated Russia would offer each humanitarian assist and help for reconstruction to permit Syrian refugees to return dwelling.