After the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, Russia is putting its back into it and working hard to save the furniture, two in this case: the Tartus sea base and the Hmeimim airport. Deployed in Syria since 2015, the Russian army has also used these two complementary bases, linked by a 60-km road, as a logistical support point for its subsequent operations in the Sahel.

The loss of Hmeimim would be a huge problem for Russia's aging wide-body aircraft, whose range is insufficient to fly all the way from southern Russia to Libya. The Russian authorities have therefore entered into negotiations with the new masters of Damascus, the former Islamist rebels of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to keep their bases in Syria – negotiations whose outcome remains uncertain.

In the event of an imminent expulsion, over the past 10 days the Russian army has regrouped all its military and logistical assets scattered across Syria – some 19 bases and almost 100 posts – in the two remaining bases. Large convoys of trucks and armored vehicles have been observed converging on the Mediterranean coast, once an Alawite stronghold. The fact that this vast logistical operation was able to take place without notorious incident proves the existence of coordination between the Russian general staff and HTS, which was the target of its bombardments for nine years.

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