page_title: Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War
section_title: Foreign
hierarchical_section_title: Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War / Reactions / Foreign
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Встреча Президента России Владимира Путина с Президентом Ирана Хасаном Рухани и Президентом Турции Реджепом Тайипом Эрдоганом в Сочи. Переговоры посвящены проблематике сирийского урегулирования.
context_page_description: Russia has supported the incumbent Bashar al-Assad government of Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011: politically, with military aid, and since September 2015 through direct military involvement. The latter marked the first time since the end of the Cold War that Russia entered an armed conflict outside the borders of the former Soviet Union.
  Since October 2011, Russia, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, repeatedly vetoed Western-sponsored draft resolutions in the UN Security Council that demanded the resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and opened the possibility of U.N. sanctions against his government. The Russian leadership rejects the demands of Western powers and their Arab allies that Bashar Assad should not be allowed to be a participant in the Syria settlement. In January and February 2012, Russian peace initiatives were dismissed by the opposition Syrian National Council and by the Western powers.
  In September 2015, the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament authorised the Russian president to use armed forces in Syria.
context_section_description: In January 2012, Human Rights Watch criticised Russia for "repeating the mistakes of Western governments during the Arab Spring by continuing to support a longstanding authoritarian ally [Assad] whose people have clearly expressed the desire for democratic change".  The human rights group also accused Russia of selectively using one of its reports to support a one-sided position on Syria.
  Former UK ambassador to Russia from 2004 to 2008, Tony Brenton, said in April 2012 that Russia is looking – in Syria – for its first opportunity since the Cold War to boost its brokering abilities.
  In October 2015, Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, wrote: "The Russian air force in Syria has flown straight into the West's fantasy air space. The Russians, we are now informed, are bombing the "moderates" in Syria – "moderates" whom even the Americans admitted two months ago, no longer existed."
  The New York Times opined that with anti-government insurgents in Syria receiving for the first time bountiful supplies of U.S.-made anti-tank missiles and with Russia raising the number of airstrikes against the government's opponents that had raised morale in both camps, broadening war objectives and hardening political positions, the conflict was turning into an all-out proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. This analysis was shared by the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad that drew parallels with the situation in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
  In 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh expressed the view that Russia's military campaign against militant groups in Syria was "very good" and more effective than the U.S.-led campaigns, stating "I don't know why we persist on living in the Cold War, but we do. Russia actually did a very good job. They..did the bombing that was more effective than what we do, I think that's fair to say."
   US: The US-led coalition that is launching its own airstrikes against ISIS demanded that Russia stop attacking targets other than ISIS. "We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL," said the US-led coalition. it also objected to Assad's participation in the intelligence sharing. By the opposition other than ISIS it is meant the groups have received training and weapons from US and other Assad's enemies. "We do not support the presence of Syrian government officials who are part of a regime that has brutalized its own citizens," said Col. Steven H. Warren, the spokesman for the US-led coalition.
   United Kingdom: "They are backing the butcher Assad, which is a terrible mistake, for them and the world," said British Prime Minister David Cameron.
  In a February 2020 article, former deputy secretary of defense, Michael Mulroy, said that Russia’s actions in Syria led to substantial benefits for their military posture there including a strategic warm-water naval facility in the eastern Mediterranean, at Tartus, as well as air bases in and around the capital of Damascus. He continued, that through an unconventional approach, by supporting proxy forces, Russia has also reduced its military budget by 20 percent while still making strategic geographic and political gains. A withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria will cement all the gains Russia has made, leaving them as the ultimate victor on the irregular warfare battlefield of Syria. However, he said they did this, "by supporting the most horrific war crimes in a generation."
caption: Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Russia, 2017
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