On 30 September, 2015, Russian military jets bombed targets in Syria for the first time in what was the start of a long Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war, in progress since 2011. Earlier in the day, the Russian Duma authorised President Putin to deploy Russian air forces to Syria. The military goal, was limited, “exclusively air support of the Syrian armed forces”, according to Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s Chief of Staff at the time. He also said the decision was made at the request of Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, which makes the Russian deployment official and legal because it was requested by a United Nations recognised government.

Russia’s intervention was also seeking to prevent the collapse of the Al-Assad regime, a long-time Moscow ally. At the time, the Damascus regime was on the verge of collapse as it battled myriad of armed groups, including foreign mercenaries, fighters supporting Daesh, as it established itself as the de facto state over swathes of land in Syria and Iraq. Iran and its ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon were already fighting for Al-Assad and saw the Russian intervention as a timely move to keep Al-Assad in power.

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Nine years on, and the regime in which Moscow has heavily invested vanished in less than two weeks when fighters from the Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham – which was an Al-Qaeda affiliate when Moscow intervened back in 2015 – simply walked into Bashar Al-Assad’s presidential place in Damascus, virtually unopposed.  The fall of Damascus is now history, but it has far reaching implications, particularly its impact on Russia’s regional policy and how strategic was the Russian gamble on Assad?

Russia maintains two military bases in Syria as an outpost for Moscow’s power projection and strategic military presence, not only to counter the United States’........

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