Russian navy ships have been spotted leaving the Kremlin’s crucial seaport in the Mediterranean as the renewed Syrian civil war threatens to engulf it.
Naval analyst H I Sutton said Russia’s Tartus naval base in Syria was now under threat from rebel attack as the fast-moving front line closed in.
“The dramatic shift in the front lines in Syria now puts the base at risk. There are indications that Russia may be evacuating its naval vessels,” he said.
The Tartus naval base is important for Russia because it is its only Mediterranean “replenishment and repair point”. It has also been used as the dropping-off point for Russian special forces to enter the Syrian conflict.
So important is Tartus to the Russian navy that in 2017, Putin ordered its expansion.
But H I Sutton said two of Russia’s five naval ships had now left the port. Russia also has a submarine based at Tartus.
This “is the first visible sign that Russia is moving valuable assets out of the country,” he said.
Russia has been allied to Syria’s central government since 2015 when it first deployed soldiers, and on Monday, Vladimir Putin made his first comment on the intensifying fighting, telling his Iranian counterpart that he was 100 per cent behind Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The Russian air force has also been bombing rebel positions, killing hundreds of fighters, in an effort to slow their advance.
Writing on X, naval analyst Droxford Maritime agreed “there is a realistic possibility” the departure of Russian naval ships was linked to renewed fighting in Syria.
He also said one of the ships spotted leaving Tartus was the Yelnya, a Project 169 Altay class oiler which has been described as a “valuable asset and important to maintaining Russia’s force in the Mediterranean”.
The port is also considered a critical part of the supply link for Russia’s support for military strongman General Khalifa Haftar, who dominates the eastern part of war-torn Libya.
Jalel Harchaoui, of the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank, said if the Kremlin did give up Tartus, it would have a knock-on effect on its strategies in Libya, which have been designed to rival the West.
“Any potential loss by Moscow of these ports would reshape the fate of the Haftar family,” he said.
Set up as a Soviet naval base in 1971, Tartus was bulked up in 2012, being turned into Russia’s main overseas naval base.
From the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it took on increased significance after Putin ordered his naval forces to adopt an aggressive posture to deter any Nato forces from using the Mediterranean Sea to interfere with his war.
H I Sutton also said if Russia did abandon the naval base it would be complicated for it to get its ships back to a friendly port and the Kremlin may order an “attempt on the Black Sea route again”.
“If so, it will expose itself to Ukraine’s surface drones,” he said.
As well as pulling its ships out of the Tartus naval base, Russian forces have reportedly withdrawn from two other bases near Aleppo, which rebel forces captured on Friday. One of these bases is the Hama Air Base, which is seen as a lynchpin site.
Putin has also sacked the general commanding Russian forces in Syria.
The offensive led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadist group and its allies has reignited front lines which had been static for more than four years.
Its main rival, the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has also been fighting against Syrian government forces.
Monitors have said incompetent and poorly trained Syrian government forces melted away after the rebel attack, allowing HTS forces to make rapid gains across the northwest of the country.
Syrian army forces are now working on reinforcing defensive lines in Hama province to start a counter-attack against armed groups, the Syrian state news agency reported on Tuesday.
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