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 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.
Overall, the Russian military’s future in Syria looks bleak. Syria’s new authorities have canceled a lease for Tartus, and the recent docking of two Russian ships there suggests a complete evacuation may have already started. And with regional heavyweight Turkey “now in a position to influence its neighbor’s future diplomatically, economically and militarily,” per a recent Reuters report, Moscow’s longstanding role as Syria’s primary arms supplier may have reached its final days too.
If so, that would mark the end of an era spanning almost 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 in favor of Syrian wars with Israel, which has largely explained the country’s foreign policy since it won independence from France in 1946. “
In fact, to Israel’s chagrin, in all its wars opposing Syria and clashing with the Syrian army, it encountered a massively Soviet adversary. In June 1967 and October 1973, the following Arab-Israeli wars, Syria fought Israel with MIG-15, MIG-17 and MIG-21 tanks in the air and T-55 and T-62 tanks on the ground, however, in 1967, it lost the Golan Heights opposed Israel and failed in its attempt at this strategic territory in 1973.
Syria would continue rearming with Soviet hardware and munitions throughout the rest of the 1970s to replenish its losses from those major wars and modernize its armed forces. According to the extensive Stockholm International Peace Research Institute arms transfer database, Syrian acquisitions in this period included more T-62 tanks, newer MiG-23 Flogger fighters, and S-75 (SA-2) air defenses. By 1980, Syria was taking delivery of MiG-25 Foxbats, the fastest fighter in the world at the time, and T-72 tanks, receiving over 1,200 of the latter by the end of the decade. (From the mid-1960s until the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union also supplied Syria’s small navy with over a dozen secondhand Osa-class missile boats, 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 positioned the S-75 near the Lebanese border, alarming Israel, which protested that systems can threaten their common surveillance flights over Lebanon. Claiming that Israel makes additional army plans opposes him, Syria said. In a position for war and, in an oblique reference to its weapon supplier superpower, he warned that he would not fight this war alone.
The Syrian Defense Minister said twice in the same year that the Soviet Union had already agreed to supply Damascus with nuclear weapons on the occasion that Israel introduced a nuclear attack opposed to Syria. One Soviet official dismissed such claims without wonder as “pure nonsense. “(Damascus compensated for the defeat of the Bekaa Valley and the bombardment of its positions in Lebanon through the U. S. Navy. )U. S. The following year after 241 U. S. infantry were unfortunately killed in the bombing of the Beyrut barracks. )
A Jane Weekly Defense Report in 1986 pointed out that the giant imports of Syria’s Soviet weapons made it a “formidable fighting machine”, but resulted in the accumulation of giant debts that may not pay, the accumulation does not It was enough to be triumphant over Israel in some other war.
Syria continued improving its air defenses with Soviet imports throughout the 1980s, receiving Buk-1M and Osa surface-to-air missile systems. It also bought a fleet of fourth-generation MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets and Su-24 Fencer bombers. It built a sizable surface-to-surface missile arsenal of Scuds and SS-21s. Notably, Moscow denied Damascus the longer-range SS-23 (OTR-23 Oka).
By the end of the decade, there were signs that the high point of the army’s ties between Moscow and Damascus had passed. The Soviet Union has announced that it would consider reducing the army’s aid to Syria, noting that Damascus’ “ability to pay” for weapons was “not unlimited” but under pressure to maintain cordial relations. Syrian officials have cited beneficial help from the U. S. military in Israel when they asked Moscow for help.
One dark incident also concerned tensions just below the surface of the relationship. One morning in 1989, two Syrian helicopters fired on a Soviet army cruiser boarded in the Syrian coastal town of Latakie, killing two Soviet sailors. Although the stated cause of the incident remains disputed, one analyst said the moment would have possibly reported that Damascus did not subtly sign off its misfortune with secure facets of relations with its Soviet boss at the 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.
The remarkable weapons agreements were Soviet and the Russian Federation, without money, temporarily proposed a new appointment with Syria. In the words of this reviewed event, Moscow would only sell defensive weapons in Damascus. In addition, I would now require currency payments. Over time, when the Soviet ideology avoided the principles of the market when it treated its consumer with the closest Arab weapons.
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 went to Moscow in July 1999, he proposed a $2 billion deal, adding the SU-27 and S-300. The United States has warned Russian President Boris Yeltsin that he may cancel the $50 million aid if Moscow concluded new deals with Damascus.
Syria has never received Sublime Su-27 or S-300 complicated, in the end receiving only anti-tank missiles and portable missiles on the surface in the 90s and 2000s.
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 has concluded an agreement to sell portable air defense missiles through Guy in Syria (SA-18) in 2005. To appease US and Israeli concerns in which Syria can transfer those Manpad to the Strelet formula. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov said it in March 2005. “It is not a Guypack air defense formula, which is portable,” he said. “Strelets is a large and confusing formula that should not be transported in the mountains. ” (Russia even shared documents with Israel the next month that appeared how the types had several IGLA missiles designed only to obtain from their motorized pitcher).
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 these new systems began to reach that the country descended to a devastating civil war when Bashar al-Assad violently suppressed a motion of non-violent protest encouraged through the Arab spring throughout the region in 2011. This resulting clash would last More than a decade and leaves at least 500,000 dead Syrians.
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 particularly degrade the air defenses of Syria and save Iran from achieving his declared goal and they. Reports in Russian and Syrian state media indicated that the new Syrian systems, namely, the Pantir-S1 and BUK-M2, controlled to intercept Israeli Israeli. Air -launched confrontation ammunition.
Another contentious agreement of Russia-Siria for Israel the 2010 order of S-300 air defenses at high altitude, which were scheduled to deliver until mid-2014 and were much more complex than any other formula that Syria had. Russia would then deliver an S-300 to Syria in 2018, but on markedly 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 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 depot at the broken site of the Oldarray. . [ ] City of Palmyra in the middle of Syria. Syrian troops supported through Russian aircraft finished the recapture of the historic city of Palmyra from the Islamic State (IS) of fighters of the organization on March 2, 2017. (Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP Getty Images)
The “Syrian” S-300 was only delivered until 2018 after a Syrian S-200 mistakenly shot down a Russian shipping plane while approaching near Israeli fighter jets acting in the air in sound territory. Russia blamed Israel for the incident and promptly handed over the formula. However, there was one capture. The strategic formula remained firmly under the Russian army and was only Syrian. Adding insult to injury, Russia withdrew it from the country in 2022 when it was involving more resources to exhaust its war in Ukraine.
While Russia allegedly delivered the MIG-29 modernized in Syria in June 2020, it is probably a policy for the secret delivery of unmarked commitment in Libya, which stopped in the main Syrian air base in Russia, Hmeimim, on the way to Libya to Jura. Syrian’s rare MIG-29 photographs emerged last month, with obviously visual symptoms of immense wear.
The last two deliveries of Russian armaments to Syria listed on the SIPRI database were both from 2021 and consisted of four Mi-24P helicopter gunships and 50 R-73 short-range air-to-air missiles for the MiG-29s. Mere weeks before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it conducted a joint air patrol with the Syrian air force, including along the Euphrates River and Syria’s Golan Heights frontier with Israel. It was clearly an attempt to demonstrate control over the country’s airspace, which, especially in retrospect, was always largely symbolic.
The immediate cave of the Syrian regime in December 2024 and the evacuation of Bashar al-Assad to Moscow via Hmeimim passed the end of the former Syrian soldier. Sensing a historic opportunity, Israel went down with many airstrikes, destroying the remaining parts of an army arsenal that took more than 50 years to build in a few days with impunity. The assets of the maximum vital army in Syria, which added its MIG-29 fleet, have risen in smoke, and all of its OSA Elegance missile boats have been driven while it was still moored in port.
With Russia’s days in the country most likely numbered, it seems unlikely that Syria’s new leadership will rely on it for arms to the extent the Assad dynasty did for the duration of its rule. They may not even seek Russia as a significant arms supplier at all and make a complete break with this decades-old status quo. Rather than try and rebuild the old military, Syria may start over by acquiring arms from Turkey and other regional countries.
Syria will probably be maximum in internal security in the predictable future. Therefore, drones and armored cars built through Turk can meet their fastest requirements. Turkey used its local weapons systems in Syria several times before, basically opposite to the forces led through Syrian Kurds, but also, in a remarkable operation in Idlib in 2020, opposed to the old regime of a devastating effect.
Whichever Damascus makes the decision to do so in the long term, it is already evident that Russia’s days serving as the first arms supplier ended up ignoring.
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