Year After Assad’s Fall, Russia Preserves Syrian Energy Influence

Extensive Russian influence in Syria goes back to the Soviet era and survived the collapse of the USSR and the end of communism. It appears that now Russian influence in Syria has survived the fall of Assad.POOL/AFP via Getty Images A year after former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’athist dictatorship collapsed under the blows of Ahmed El-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant) Islamist militia, the Kremlin, the patron of the deposed regime has not disappeared. Despite expectations, Russia has not withdrawn from Syria, but instead has retrenched itself “under new management.” Early assessments indicated that Moscow’s presence in Syria would evaporate with Assad’s departure. That would have been in the interest of Turkey, El-Sharaa’s main patron, and of the U.S. Instead, the Kremlin pivoted, shedding only the murky warlord economy it had previously profited from, but preserving its interests in agriculture, infrastructure, and especially energy. Moscow is now transforming its wartime stake in Assad’s dictatorship into a durable state-to-state partnership with Syria’s new Islamist bosses and positioning itself to outlast yet another political change in Damascus. This makes a lot of geopolitical sense. Russia has engaged Syria closely at least since the 1963 Ba’ath Party coup, which, after he led yet another coup to oust the Marxist-socialist wing of the Ba’athists in favor of the nationalists in 1970, brought Bashar’s father, Hafez el-Assad, formerly an Alawite Air Force officer, into power. The Assads proceeded to rule Syria with an iron, pro-Soviet hand for over half a century, until the deposed Bashar fled to Moscow in December 2024.

From Warlord Economics to State Control Under Bashar Assad during Syria’s agonizing civil war, Russia projected power through its air force and naval bombardments of ISIS and other regime opponents, but also via private militias and mercenaries, particularly the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. That was a shadowy oligarch, nicknamed “the Kremlin cook”, who originally connected with Vladimir Putin when Putin was deputy mayor in St. Petersburg. Despite Damascus’ dependency on Moscow’s arms supplies, interstate trade barely moved the needle. Russian exports rarely exceeded 0.6 billion dollars after 2011, and investment initiatives not backed by guns routinely stalled. What thrived was the grey-zone economic empire, a black-market oil trade in particular. Prigozhin-linked companies — Euro Polis, Kapital, Mercury, Velada — secured lucrative oil and gas security deals in exchange for counter-ISIS operations. Leveraging mercenary protection, another Putin crony, Gennady Timchenko, worked to expand the Stroytransgaz construction company’s control over Tartus port operations, the al-Thawra oil fields, and the Homs phosphate plants. Prigozhin’s unsuccessful June 2023 rebellion against Putin and his subsequent assassination in the fiery aircraft explosion in August 2023 broke Wagner’s spine. Assad’s fall in 2024 at the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham brought Russia’s Syrian shady business operations to a close. In January 2025, the new authorities in Damascus revoked Stroytransgaz’s Tartus contract, signaling the collapse of Moscow’s mercenary-based operating model. MORE FOR YOU But Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, always on the lookout for his own multilateral policy, did not slam the door. As early as December 2024, now with his mujahedin fighter’s beard neatly trimmed and in a Western business suit, he was calling Russia “the world’s second most powerful state” and emphasizing “shared strategic interests.” Moscow responded immediately.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov flew to Damascus, and Putin himself followed with a personal call to endorse the transition. Both sides signaled they were prepared to preserve the relationship even without Assad. Damascus needed a major external partner during a volatile transition period to avoid falling completely into Turkey’s orbit, and Russia was willing to fill that role. Fuel First, Then Food Moscow’s pivot was rapid and calculated. It took out its toolkit that includes commodities and state-led aid. When Assad fell, Syria plunged into fuel shortages. Russia moved first. In March, a tanker unloaded approximately 100,000 tons of diesel and another 100,000 tons of ARCO crude shipped by Gazprom Neft, a company once oriented toward Europe. Subsequent deliveries pushed Russia’s total supplies to around 350,000 tons by May. The volumes remain modest, but the point is market share capture and penetration. Russia is claiming space in a downstream sector long dominated by Iran. So much for the Moscow-Teheran brotherly alliance. Once fuel corridors opened, Moscow shifted to food. Syria’s wheat reserves had been gutted by years of drought and mismanagement. In April, 6,600 tons of Russian wheat arrived in Latakia. Moscow also made a $5 million contribution for food supplies to Syria through the UN World Food Program. Putin and Russia have long embraced flexible realism, pivoting seamlessly away from supporting Assad to embracing his opposition.SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images Moscow Broadens its Post-Assad Portfolio Russia is broadening its reach. In September, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who supervises energy and the broader economy, offered support for energy sector reconstruction, humanitarian supplies, and joint projects in fuel, food, and pharmaceuticals. He also proposed reactivating the intergovernmental economic commission to bind Syrian ministries directly to Russian bureaucratic structures. By October, al-Sharaa was in Moscow. His 2.5-hour meeting with Putin covered infrastructure and energy facilities. Novak made the Kremlin’s intentions explicit, telling reporters that “Russia is ready to work in the oil fields of Syria,” including those it had been active in before, as well as newly identified sources. The era of mercenaries guarding Syrian oil wells is over. The era of Russian state companies drilling them is beginning. Most importantly, throughout this political whirlwind from the Assads’ Ba’ath nationalist socialism to Al-Sharaa cleaned-up Jihadism v2.0, Russia’s military footprint hasn’t budged.

The Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia and the naval logistics hub in Tartus continue operating under new political management despite fears of seizure. Moscow seems ready to continue using these key facilities to influence the geopolitical order in the Middle East and project power into Africa. The indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets within Syria by the Russian air force has not endeared the Syrian population to Moscow.NurPhoto via Getty ImagesFlexible Realism, Russian Style What ultimately strengthens Russia’s position is not fuel, grain, or even military bases. Moscow is the quintessential practitioner of “practical realism.” It does not lecture Damascus about human rights abuses, does not insist on democratic benchmarks, and does not condition aid on political reforms. If Syria’s transition stalls or if al-Sharaa falls back on terror and authoritarian practices, Russia will not object. It will simply adjust. If Damascus succeeds in reforms and meets the highest expectations of the most optimistic, regaining favor in European capitals, Moscow will already be embedded in Syria’s oil fields, ports, fields, ministries, and supply chains. And it will try to check its frenemy Ankara from the South. It won’t be the first time Russia has shown agility in jumping through a window of opportunity. In the Russia-Afghanistan war of 1979-1989, the Russians took heavy losses, including 14,262 troops killed, some 49,485 permanently disabled, and 415,932 soldiers returned home with claims of diseases that included infectious hepatitis and typhoid fever. The war cost Moscow billions of rubles and much in credibility and prestige, and is widely considered to have been one of key factors contributing to the USSR’s collapse in December 1991. Nevertheless, after the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Russia began re-engaging. It became the first country to formally recognize Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 2025, citing the “potential for commercial and economic cooperation in energy, transportation, agriculture and infrastructure.” This is the Kremlin’s long game. In Syria, a country exhausted by war and wary of foreign pressure, Russia’s decades-old commitment, history of arms supplies, and transactional approach can enable Moscow’s influence to survive and strengthen. In a tragic and ironic twist of history, the Russian barrel bombs and multiple rocket launchers that previously enabled Assad’s bloody hold on power, are now becoming the basis for more sustainable and profitable forms of influence with the cooperation of the people who suffered the most from Russia’s longstanding presence in Syria. As the late French president Charles de Gaulle, channeling Britain’s 19th century statesman, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, is widely credited with having said, “No nation has friends, only interests.”