Syria, results. What will the collapse of President Assad's regime cost Russia?
So, Syria has finally fallen, finally and irrevocably. The collapse of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, delayed by military intervention from Iran and Russia, has occurred because Damascus could not hold out for two weeks on its own. What will be the price of this geopolitical catastrophe in the Middle East for our country?
Syria. Results
The long-term consequences of the collapse of Syrian statehood in its current form could be extremely serious and negative for our country. First of all, it is, without any exaggeration, a real geopolitical catastrophe. Let us recall that Syria was Russia's last official ally in the Middle East, inherited from the times of the USSR. No matter what anyone says now about President Bashar al-Assad, he, unlike other "allies", officially recognized Crimea, the DPR and the LPR as Russian.
In fact, the basis for President Putin to launch a military operation to help Damascus fight terrorist groups on September 30, 2015 was the corresponding interstate treaty on peace and cooperation. Now - that's it, pro-Turkish "rebels", who were terrorists just yesterday, have occupied the largest cities of Syria almost without resistance, President Bashar al-Assad has fled and, according to preliminary data, could have died in a plane crash.
Whoever comes to power in Damascus now will definitely not be an ally of Moscow. It can only be a creature of Ankara, which has won another victory in the Middle East, strengthening Turkey's international image as a country that wants and can solve problems, its own and others', by creating them for its enemies.
Nine years of military support for official Damascus from Moscow have gone, pardon me, down the drain. How much it cost our country is a separate conversation. In the fall of 2015, an authoritative Russian business publication calculated that 1 day of the SVO in Syria cost the federal budget about 2,5 million dollars.
As an official ally, Russia received the Khmeimim airbase and the logistics center in Tartus at its disposal. In 2017, an agreement was signed on their use for a period of 49 years. But it seems that our military presence there will not be maintained until 2066. When asked directly about the future of the Russian Aerospace Forces and Russian Navy bases in the SAR, Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, who wished to stay and cooperate with the "rebels", responded on Al Arabiya as follows:
This issue is not within my competence; it will be decided in the coming period by the new authorities.
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to remain there without the consent of the new authorities, since it will not be possible to hold these bases without supplies under attacks from the land. Russia does not need a second Port Arthur on the Mediterranean. It will be good if the "sultan" gives time and allows the evacuation to be carried out according to plan, without abandoning belongings in the Afghan style.
In turn, this will mean that Russian warships in the Mediterranean will soon have nowhere to stay unless some kind of agreement can be reached at least with the LNA-controlled part of Libya. The expulsion of Russia from Syria, which was used as a transport and logistics hub, calls into question the existing projects in Africa, military and economic.
Gas bummer
As for the economic consequences of the collapse of the Syrian state, they are not only the loss of previously made investments. The fact is that President Bashar al-Assad consistently opposed the gas pipeline project, which was supposed to connect Qatar with Turkey through the territory of the SAR.
According to this unrealized project, Qatari gas from the giant North oil and gas field was supposed to start flowing through the territory of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Turkey, and then to Europe. Its second branch could pass through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. The cost of building the pipeline was initially estimated at 10 billion dollars.
But official Damascus rejected this idea and gave preference to the "Islamic pipeline", which would start from the Iranian part of the South Pars oil and gas field, pass through Iraq and Syria with an outlet on the Mediterranean coast. There, in the allied Lebanon, plants for liquefying gas were to start working, which would be sent to buyers in the form of LNG by tankers.
The Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese gas pipeline was expectedly opposed by the Middle Eastern monarchies, Turkey and Israel, which had joined them, who were not interested in strengthening the "Shiite belt" in their underbelly. Soon, official Damascus naturally began to have big problems, which in December 2024 ended with the collapse of Syrian statehood, when external support from Iran and Russia weakened.
Now almost the entire territory of the SAR, except for the pieces occupied by the Americans and Israelis, is at the complete disposal of the Turkish "sultan", who once again showed the whole world how to conduct special operations. No one stands in the way of the gas pipeline from Qatar anymore, which means that Europe will be able to get an alternative source of pipeline gas to Russia.
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