Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war
On 30 September 2015, Russia launched a military intervention in Syria after a request by the regime of Bashar al-Assad for military support in its fight against the Syrian opposition and Islamic State in the Syrian civil war. The intervention began with extensive air strikes across Syria, focused on strongholds of opposition factions such as the Free Syrian Army, the Revolutionary Command Council, and Sunni militant groups comprising the Army of Conquest coalition. In line with the Assad regime's rhetoric, Syrian military chief Ali Abdullah Ayoub depicted Russian airstrikes as part of a general campaign against "terrorism." Russian special operations forces, military advisors and private military contractors like the Wagner Group were also sent to Syria to support the Assad regime, which was on the verge of collapse. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement had included diplomatic support for Assad and billions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment for the Syrian Arab Armed Forces. In December 2017, the Russian government announced that its troops would be deployed to Syria permanently.
At the onset of the intervention, the Syrian government controlled only 26% of Syrian territory. Although Russia initially portrayed its intervention as a "war against terrorism" solely targeting the Islamic State, Russia employed scorched-earth methods against civilian areas and Syrian opposition strongholds opposed to IS and Al-Qaeda. Weeks after the intervention began, Russian officials disclosed that President Vladimir Putin's chief objectives were maintaining the allied Ba'athist government in Damascus and capturing territories from American-backed Free Syrian militias, with a broader geo-political objective of rolling back U.S. influence. In a televised interview in October 2015, Putin said that the military operation had been thoroughly prepared in advance. He defined Russia's goal in Syria as "stabilising the legitimate power in Syria and creating the conditions for political compromise". In 2016 alone, more than 80% of Russian aerial attacks targeted opposition militias fighting the Islamic State. Despite Russia's extensive bombing of opposition strongholds, the territory under the Assad regime's actual control shrank from 26% of Syria in 2015 to 17% in early 2017.
In early January 2017, Chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that the Russian Air Force had carried out 19,160 combat missions and delivered 71,000 strikes on "the infrastructure of terrorists". The intervention only began producing concrete gains for the Assad government from 2017; after the recapture of Aleppo in December 2016. These included the recaptures of Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor from the Islamic State in 2017, fall of Daraa and collapse of the Southern Front during the 2018 Southern Syria offensive; followed by the complete seizure of M5 Motorway during the North-Western Syria offensive. For Russia, the intervention has swelled its position in the great-power competition with the United States, guaranteed access to the Eastern Mediterranean, and bolstered its capacity to conduct military operations across the wider region, such as the Red Sea and Libya.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights and Violations Documentation Centre stated that from its inception in September 2015 until the end of February 2016, Russian air strikes killed at least 2,000 civilians. SNHR report stated that civilian deaths from the Russian offensive had exceeded those caused by the Islamic State and the Syrian Army since Russian operations began. The UK-based pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a slightly lower estimate: at least 1,700 civilians, including more than 200 children. Weapons used included unguided bombs, cluster bombs, incendiaries similar to white phosphorus and thermobaric weapons. By the end of April 2018, the SOHR documented that Russian bombings directly killed more than 7,700 civilians, about a quarter of them children, apart from 4,749 opposition fighters and 4,893 IS fighters. The Russian campaign has been criticised by numerous international bodies for indiscriminate aerial bombings across Syria that target schools and civilian infrastructures and carpet bombing of cities like Aleppo. The findings of BMJ Global Health and a UN investigation report published in 2020 revealed that the RuAF also "weaponized health-care" through its hospital bombardment campaigns; by pursuing a deliberate policy of bombing ambulances, clinical facilities, hospitals and all medical infrastructure. Russia also reportedly employed double tap strikes to target relief workers.
The intervention polarized governments. Countries with ties to Russia, as well as Israel, Jordan and Egypt, either voiced support or stayed neutral, while the US, as well as Turkey and most gulf states, were critical, denouncing Russia for its role in the war and its complicity with the Syrian regime's war crimes. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International stated that Russia was committing war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians. The United States government imposed economic sanctions against Russia for supporting the Syrian government. Officials at the United Nations condemned the Russian intervention and stated that Russia was committing war crimes. Russian authorities dismissed this denunciation, including accusations of "barbarism", labeling them as false and politically motivated, thereby eliciting further condemnation from governments that support the rebel groups.
In November 2024, the renewal of Russian airstrikes failed to halt the Syrian opposition offensives across the country. In the wake of Syrian opposition advances, and the widespread collapse of Syrian government forces, Russia began to withdraw their forces, and the fall of the Assad regime followed in December. Russian forces in Syria at that time consisted of special forces, base security and an aviation unit.
Background and preparation phase
The Syrian civil war has been waged since 2011 between multiple opposition groups and the government as well, including their local and foreign support bases. Since 2014, much Syrian territory had been claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant an entity internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. In the north-west of the country, the main opposition factions included the Revolutionary Command Council and the Islamic Army of Conquest coalition. Free Syrian militias that operated under the joint RCC command centre that answered to the Syrian Interim Government were being trained, vetted and equipped by United States and allies. Since September 2014, the U.S.-led CJTF coalition had begun direct intervention in Syria as part of its war against IS. The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2015 that coalition airstrikes were unsuccessful in slowing IS advances in Syria.Following his successful annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and the temporary freezing of the war in Donbas, Vladimir Putin turned his attention to Syria in 2015. Russian intelligence reports estimated that Assad government forces effectively controlled a meagre 10% of Syrian territory. Ba'athist forces were steadily losing cities and towns to rebel forces, and the survival of the Assad regime appeared increasingly uncertain. Under the advice of Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov and Russian military elites, Putin launched a full-scale military intervention of Syria to prevent the fall of their ally, Bashar al-Assad, and Syria's subsequent entry into the Western sphere of influence. Other objectives included showcasing Russian military prowess by guarding its naval port in Tartus and project Russia's expanding influence across West Asia, North Africa, Europe and Eastern Mediterranean. To avoid a repeat of the disastrous Invasion of Afghanistan, Russia implemented an irregular warfare strategy, sub-contracting ground operations to Syrian Armed Forces, allied foreign militias and Russian PMCs like Wagner. However, Russia would retain control over air operations.
The Assad regime had lost vast swathes of territories by 2015, including the governates of Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Az Zor, Al-Hasakah, Deraa and Quneitra. Assad's forces had also been pushed out of the Hama, Damascus and Homs provinces by the Syrian opposition. According to Russian and Syrian officials, in July 2015, Assad made a formal request to Russia for air strikes combating international terrorism, while laying out Syria's military problems. According to media reports with reference to anonymous sources, after a series of major setbacks suffered by the Syrian government forces in the first half of 2015, Russia and Syria agreed to intensify Russian involvement. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Quds Force visited Moscow in July to work out the details of the joint campaign.
In August 2015, Russia began to send Russian-operated warplanes, T-90 tanks and artillery, as well as combat troops to an airbase near the port city of Latakia in Syria. On 26 August 2015, a treaty was signed between the two countries which permitted Russia to use Syria's Hmeimim airport free of charge, indefinitely. Ratified by Russia's parliament in October 2016, it also grants Russian personnel and their family members jurisdictional immunity and other privileges as envisaged by Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. In September 2015, warships of Russia's Black Sea Fleet reached the eastern Mediterranean.
At the end of September, a joint information centre in Baghdad was set up by Iran, Iraq, Russia and Syria to coordinate their operations against ISIL. According to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's statement made in mid-October 2015, prior to the start of its operations in Syria, Russia invited the United States to join the Baghdad-based information center but received what he called an "unconstructive" response. According to Alexander Yakovenko, Ambassador of Russia to the United Kingdom, the Russian government received a similar rebuttal from the UK government. In late December 2015, Turkey's president Recep Erdogan said that he had declined Putin's offer to join this alliance as he "cannot sit alongside a president whose legitimacy is distrustful."
On 30 September 2015, the upper house of the Russian Federal Assembly, the Federation Council, unanimously granted Putin's request to deploy the Russian Air Force in Syria. On the same day, the Russian representative to the joint information centre arrived at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and requested that United States forces in the targeted area in Syria leave immediately. An hour later, Russian aircraft based in government-held territory launched airstrikes against opposition strongholds in Homs and Hama governorates. On the same day, Russian Orthodox Church officially praised the Federal Assembly's decision, depicting Putin's military intervention as a "holy war against terrorism".
Before and after the operation in Syria, Russian analysts said that Russia's military build-up in Syria was aimed inter alia at ending the de facto political and diplomatic isolation that the West had imposed on Putin after his 2014 invasion of Ukraine. At the onset of Russian military intervention in September 2015, the Assad regime merely controlled about a quarter of Syrian territories and was widely perceived to be heading towards an imminent collapse.