On May 17, 2018, Syrian president Bashar Assad made an ebullient visit to Moscow. The dictator’s brutal crushing of opposition groups seemed complete, with his regime fully in control of most major cities and fighting confined to a few remote areas.
“Terrorists have laid down arms in key areas of Syria, which made it possible to restore the country’s infrastructure, push them back and practically end their operations,” declared Vladimir Putin. His 2015 intervention had decisively turned the tide in Syria, or so it seemed. Following Russia’s lightning fast military conquests in Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, an alliance with Moscow suddenly appeared invaluable.
How little remains of that imperial hubris. The November offensive in Aleppo, which saw Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Turkish-backed forces capture significant portions of Syria’s largest city and fighting near Homs, represent only the latest crack in Russia’s eroding sphere of influence. Satellite images of Russian warships leaving their Syrian moorings and Russian military bases gleefully overrun by rebels simply underline the point.
The rapid advances, coupled with Moscow’s muted response, repeat a pattern seen across the world, where traditional Russian allies face increasing pressure while a Kremlin consumed by its war in Ukraine struggles to maintain a role as a key security guarantor.
The swiftness of Aleppo’s fall shocked longtime Syria observers. HTS forces, employing locally manufactured drones — like those used in Ukraine — and coordinated infantry attacks, quickly overwhelmed Syrian government positions that Russia had helped fortify since 2015. Despite an extensive network of 114 military positions and bases, Russia’s response has been minimal, limited to periodic airstrikes rather than the decisive intervention that saved Assad’s regime eight years ago.
This pattern of diminished Russian response to challenges against its allies has become increasingly apparent. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a major offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, giving Russian peacekeepers minimal notice. Within days, the region’s 120,000-strong Armenian population were forced into an exodus while Russian forces stood by.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan publicly declared the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) “a threat to national security” and by June announced Armenia’s withdrawal from the alliance. A Gallup poll showed support for CSTO membership among Armenians plummeting to 17%, while backing for NATO increased to 29%.
Central Asian states, once firmly within Moscow’s orbit, are increasingly charting independent courses. A January 2024 border dispute between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — both CSTO members — was resolved with Turkish rather than Russian mediation, negotiations which began following Russia’s failure to intervene on Kyrgyzstan’s behalf in 2022. Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries have been suffering rising casualties in West Africa.
And closer to Syria, Moscow has seen its allies degraded as their Russian-provided arms proved totally unequal to the task. Hezbollah has lost as many as 4,000 fighters in the past six weeks — more than in the first 12 years of the Syrian Civil War. Iran, meanwhile, has lost all of its Russian-supplied S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Israeli aerial strikes while failing to land a single hit.
All of which can be traced back to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Not only is Russia bogged down with an estimated 300,000 troops committed to that conflict and the armed forces unable to make good severe equipment losses, Moscow’s failure in two and half years of combat to deal a decisive blow has revealed its weakness and invited challenges to its power the world over.
The Aleppo offensive thus represents more than just another turn in Syria’s complex civil war. It demonstrates the accelerating erosion of Russia’s position as the dominant security actor across its former spheres of influence.
Its security guarantees are increasingly seen as undeliverable, the sign of a country strong on rhetoric but weak in action.
The question now is not whether Russia’s influence will diminish further, but which of its remaining allies will be the next to seek alternative security arrangements.
Ben Dubow is a Non-resident Fellow at CEPA and the founder of Omelas, which tracks authoritarian influence online.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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