With Assad in Moscow and armed rebels taking control of Latakia governorate, what will become of Russia’s military bases in Syria?
Following the rapid overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Moscow is now facing the prospect of losing its naval and air bases in Syria. Russia’s two key bases are located in the Latakia governorate, which is already under the control of rebel groups. Syrian opposition forces have yet to take an official stance on their relationship with the Russian military contingent currently stationed in Syria. And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has deemed it “too early” to talk about preserving the Russian bases at Khmeimim and Tartus. “This is a subject for discussion with those who will lead Syria,” he said on Monday. By all appearances, however, this “discussion” is already underway. Citing diplomats involved in talks between Russia, Iran, Turkey, and “leading Arab nations,” the Wall Street Journal reports that Moscow has “likely received commitments” that it could maintain its bases in Syria as “part of a transition.” But to what extent the Syrian rebels will honor those commitments remains unknown. Meduza breaks down what facilities Russia has in Syria and why their future is so uncertain.
Russia’s military bases in Syria
The Tartus naval base
Located 160 kilometers (99 miles) northwest of Damascus, Russia’s naval base in the port city of Tartus is officially called the 720th Material-Technical Support Point of the Russian Navy. According to Russian law, it’s the only naval facility located outside of the country (the Sevastopol Naval Base is located on internationally recognized Ukrainian territory, though Moscow hasn’t acknowledged this since its illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014).
The naval facility in Tartus was established in 1971, after Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, came to power. The base was meant to support the Soviet Navy’s 5th Operational Squadron in the Mediterranean, serving as a repair and replenishment point. In the 1980s, it included three floating piers, a floating workshop, storage facilities, barracks, and other amenities. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the 5th Operational Squadron ceased to exist, but the Russian Navy retained the base at Tartus.
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Until 2007, Russia used the base to refuel and replenish food supplies for its ships that occasionally passed through the Mediterranean Sea. Then, shortly after the Russo-Georgian War in August 2008, the naval base became the subject of talks between then-President Dmitry Medvedev and Bashar al-Assad. Soon after, the Russian Navy installed another floating pier and, in the years that followed, the base underwent planned infrastructure repairs.
After the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, the Tartus naval base became a “window” for Russian military aid to Assad’s forces. In 2013, the Russian Navy command formed a new squadron in the Mediterranean Sea and decided to further modernize the facility at Tartus to service and repair its ships. After Russia launched its intervention in the Syrian civil war in September 2015, Tartus became a logistics center in its supply chain — the final stop for the dozens of military and civilian ships delivering cargo from Black Sea ports (also known as the “Syrian Express”).
In 2016–2017, Russia deployed S-300 and S-400 air defense missile systems and Pantsir-S1 air defence missile-gun systems to the Tartus naval base, expanded the facility’s pier, and built canteens, bathhouses, warehouses, and a helipad.
In January 2017, Russia and Syria signed a treaty allowing Moscow to expand the facility and use the Tartus base free-of-charge for 49 years. The agreement allowed Russia to keep up to 11 ships at Tartus.
The Khmeimim airfield
Russia’s other key base in Syria is the airfield at Khmeimim, located southeast of the port city of Latakia, the administrative center of the Latakia governorate. The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) built the base adjacent to the Bassel Al-Assad International Airport following Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015.
In the less than 10 years since, Khmeimim has become a Russian stronghold in Syria. In addition to housing some fifty planes and helicopters, thousands of troops (including Wagner Group mercenaries), and their family members, robust infrastructure has grown up around the base, including a Russian Orthodox Church, a sports complex, and a concert hall. The airfield’s two runways can even accommodate strategic bombers and heavy-class military transport aircraft.
During the active fighting in the Syrian civil war in 2015–2016, Russian fighter jets and bombers carried out tens of thousands of combat sorties from the facility, largely ensuring the Syrian government’s victory over opposition forces. Even on December 7, the eve of the al-Assad regime’s fall, Russian Aerospace Forces carried out airstrikes on rebel positions, allegedly killing more than 300 “terrorists” (the Russian authorities stopped using this term to refer to anti-government forces in Syria the very next day).
What will happen to these bases now?
The situation in Syria is evolving rapidly, so neither experts nor the Russian authorities have a clear answer to this question at the moment.
Russia reduced its military presence in Syria after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Whereas at the peak of Russia’s military intervention there were likely as many as several tens of thousands of Russian servicemen and Wagner Group mercenaries in Syria, by the fall of 2024, their number was estimated at 7,500. And it’s hard to tell how much the contingent’s technical arsenal has been reduced.
Everything that can be said with any degree of certainty was summarized in this thread on X by Dara Massicot, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Citing OSINT-analyst Frederik Van Lokeren, Massicot notes that as of December 7, most of Russia’s ships were still in or near the port at Tartus. (Following earlier reports that Russian ships had begun evacuating the base, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that this maneuver was connected to Russian naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.) Massicot also recalls that these vessels wouldn’t be able to return to the Black Sea, since Ankara has closed off the Turkish straits to warships amid the Russia-Ukraine war. “[T]hey would have to attempt a very long journey to the Baltic Fleet, or try to find a temporary accommodation nearby at a limited number of ports (Libya, Sudan, Algeria),” she explains.
The prospects for evacuating the Khmeimim Air Base are even less clear. “An air evacuation would take hundreds of sorties of Il-76 and An-124,” Massicot writes, referring to two types of heavy transport planes. “When Russian forces deployed to Syria in 2015, they flew almost 300 sorties in two weeks, and that was before base expansion.” That said, a significant portion of the base’s equipment and supplies were delivered by sea in due time.
So far, OSINT analysts have observed some signs of a possible evacuation. On December 7, satellite imagery showed that three Il-76s and one An-124 arrived at the base, and then flew to Russia via Turkish airspace. According to Massicot, these aircraft were likely taking cargo and people out of Syria, but they could have also brought in mercenaries or weapons to defend Russian bases. “Il-76s (and less often An-124) land at Khmeimim as a major transport hub, sporadic arrivals were part of normal patterns. A change signifying a major evacuation will be clear,” she says.
“What happens to the fighter aircraft will also be very telling,” Massicot continues. “If Russia thinks they are going to be attacked, they can fly out the way they got them in. They can also pack up helicopters and air defense in An-124s, too.”
The fate of the Khmeimim Air Base is also important for Moscow in terms of supplying the Africa Corps, an entity the Russian Defense Ministry created to absorb and replace Wagner Group structures on the continent. Russian military transport aircraft traveled to countries in Africa via an air corridor through the Caspian Sea, Iran, and Iraq, and then refueled at the base in Syria. The Russian military command doesn’t have any other facilities at its disposal that could replace the Khmeimim airfield in this role.
It’s worth noting that there are also separate pockets of Russian military presence at other Syrian facilities. According to pro-Kremlin war correspondents, some Russian servicemen are literally stranded at airfields and bases deep inside the country that are now surrounded by rebel forces. The amount of troops and equipment at these facilities remains unclear.
The task of evacuating Russia’s bases in Syria is objectively complicated by the situation on the ground. Rebel forces have come very close to these locations, which means transport and the bases themselves will be within range of even small arms. Without security guarantees from the supporters of the new Syrian government, any routes for evacuating personnel and assets by land, air, or sea will be unavailable.
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