1 month ago
23
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The Russian president said that he had not yet met with Bashar al-Assad, the ousted Syrian leader who fled to Moscow, but that he planned to.
Dec. 19, 2024, 6:33 a.m. ET
President Vladimir V. Putin said on Thursday that Russia was still considering whether to keep its military bases in Syria and claimed that most Middle Eastern countries and ruling factions in Syria wanted Russia to stay.
“I don’t know — we’ll need to think about it,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference, referring to whether Russia would keep those bases. “We’ll need to decide for ourselves how our relationships will look with those political forces that now control and will control the situation in the country in the future. Our interests need to coincide.”
Commenting about Syria for the first time since the rule of Russia’s close ally Bashar al-Assad collapsed there on Dec. 8, Mr. Putin tried to cast the stunning turn of events as something other than a defeat for Russia and to portray Russia as being in control of its own fate.
He said Russia was in touch with “all countries” in the Middle East and “all the groups that control the situation” in Syria. The “overwhelming” majority of them, he said, “tell us that they would be interested in our bases in Syria staying.”
Analysts say that, in fact, Russia’s standing as a world power is likely to suffer as a result of Mr. al-Assad’s fall, especially if it loses its Tartus naval base and Hmeimim air base in Syria. Both have been key to Russia’s ability to project its influence across Africa and the Mediterranean.
Moscow intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, beginning several years of fierce airstrikes that helped Mr. al-Assad stay in power.
