In 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared that “the den of terrorists must be destroyed.” He was referring Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the militant group whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday.
Sharaa has been widely praised as a pragmatist. But his pivot on Russia—a full partner in Bashar al-Assad’s violence against both HTS and the Syrian people—is still remarkable.
There is no doubt that Damascus has much to gain from the relationship. Sharaa is seeking concrete support, particularly weapons, that he urgently needs while also diversifying his network of alliances. Still, such a strategy will carry serious risks. If it goes too far, Syria may face growing Western disapproval, as well as a backlash from its own citizens.
Sharaa’s pragmatic dealings with Moscow began before HTS took Damascus. As he explained in a recent interview, “When our forces arrived at Homs, the Russians stepped back from the battle entirely, withdrawing from the military scene under an agreement.” Indeed, Moscow had redirected its focus from preserving a faltering Assad regime to protecting its own strategic interests in Syria—chiefly the Hmeimim air base and the Tartus naval base, one of Russia’s only warmwater ports.
Since then, the new regime has allowed Russia to maintain access to its bases. Russia, in turn, has continued to supply Syria with oil and wheat, and it will also print the country’s new currency in December 2025. The new Syrian government also hopes that closer ties with Moscow could prompt Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, to help remove the United Nations’ terrorist designations on Sharaa and his former HTS associates.
More importantly, what Sharaa seeks now are defensive weapons that only Russia can supply. After Israel destroyed roughly 85 percent of Syria’s military capabilities in December 2024, Sharaa’s army was left toothless: no air defense systems and only a limited number of tanks and fighter jets. For a country as threatened as Syria, whether by external actors such as Israel and Iran or domestic opponents such as Druze militias and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a military composed of personnel without capabilities will not guarantee stability or deterrence.
Turkey, as Sharaa’s main backer, has provided some military support. But it remains cautious about delivering heavier weapons due to Israeli fears of deeper Turkish entrenchment in Syria. And the United States and its Western allies are unwilling to do so because of concerns about arming a military force implicated in two sectarian massacres this year.
And so, on Oct. 3, a Syrian defense delegation led by the military’s chief of staff visited Moscow, where Russian officials presented a range of military equipment developed by their defense industry. The systems on offer included air defense systems, combat drones, and armored vehicles. The visit placed particular emphasis on advanced air defense systems designed to counter Israeli precision-guided munitions and drones—both of which have posed serious challenges to the new Syrian government in recent months.
The burgeoning defense relationship represents a triumph of opportunism on both sides. During the civil war, Russia was Assad’s indispensable military procurer, delivering hundreds of tanks and air defense systems to the former regime. Now, Moscow appears eager to reprise that role—this time with a completely different leader. It’s a testament to Russia’s enduring strategy to safeguard its bases in Syria, regardless of who rules in Damascus.
Sharaa’s approach is also a calculated one. Like many world leaders, he is attempting a balancing act between Moscow and the West. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example, maintains Turkey’s membership in NATO yet continues to buy Russian gas and has even purchased Russian air defense systems. Sharaa appears to be following a similar playbook. He may hope that his outreach to Russia will create enough concern among Western leaders that they will drop some of their more stringent demands over power sharing and minority rights.
But as leaders like Erdogan have discovered, playing Russia and the West off each other can be difficult. And it’s all the more challenging in a country where many citizens remember Russian aerial assaults all too clearly.
The bloodshed and destruction that Russia has inflicted since 2015 remain deeply etched in the collective memory of many Syrians. As one person put it in response to a recent poll, “The Russians killed half the Syrian people, supported Assad’s regime until they destroyed our homes and killed us, so on what basis should we reconcile with these criminal Russians?”
For Sharaa, moving closer to Moscow will require shifting public opinion. If he succeeds in securing the advanced military systems that Syria desperately needs, that may help. Since Assad’s fall, Israeli airstrikes—more than 700 between December and April alone—have fueled growing anger toward Israel. Sharaa could exploit that sentiment, presenting a stronger Russian partnership as a means to deter Israeli attacks and defend sovereignty.
There are also external costs, although it remains to be seen how severe.
During his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly in September, Sharaa met with several high-level Western leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron. He also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who agreed to restore diplomatic relations between Kyiv and Damascus. However, if Sharaa now moves closer to Moscow, he risks undermining all those diplomatic gains. Members of the European Parliament have already urged Syria’s new government to ban Russia’s military presence in the country. In March, they released a statement calling on Syria to “break free from its notorious long-standing alliances with Tehran and Moscow.”
Israel, by contrast, may feel more at ease with Damascus’s growing ties to Moscow. Back in February, Israeli officials reportedly lobbied Washington to preserve Russia’s military bases in Syria, seeing them as a counterbalance to Turkey’s growing influence over the new Syrian government.
Historically, Israel maintained a robust relationship with Russia during Moscow’s intervention to support the Assad regime. The two countries established communication and deconfliction mechanisms, as Israel was primarily concerned with Iran’s expanding military footprint across Syria. Today, that concern appears to have shifted; Turkey has replaced Iran as Israel’s primary worry in Syria. Over the past few months, Israel has drawn clear red lines regarding Turkish military entrenchment and has even struck sites that were to be used by the Turkish military. Russia did not object to the strikes and is unlikely to object to increased Israeli activity in the future. Even if Sharaa says he is seeking Russian weapons to defend against Israeli airstrikes, Israel still might prefer that to a strengthened Turkish presence.
Washington, for its part, has yet to articulate a clear policy on the future of Russian bases in Syria. Hmeimim plays a strategic role in supporting Russia’s Africa Corps, while the naval base in Tartus gives the country access to the Mediterranean.
The Trump administration has also been ambivalent on punishing countries for their economic ties with Moscow. Yet Congress may well move to reimpose sanctions if Syria acquires weapons systems directly from Russia and its state-owned armed exporter. Many of the systems under discussion would meet the “significant” transaction threshold under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act—whether because they require substantial financial dealings with Russia’s defense industry or because they represent a major upgrade of Syria’s military capabilities.
Sharaa, in short, is playing a risky game with the Russians. But then, no one can say he’s naive about them.