Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
As Syria suffered from the collapse of its position in Lebanon in 2005, an old friend was riding to the rescue in Damascus. As early as 2004, Russia began pursuing a renewed relationship with Syria. Where this relationship will eventually take the two countries, however, remains unclear. …
Syria was the Soviet Union’s most dependable client in the Middle East during the Cold War. Syria in turn relied on Soviet patronage to build and maintain its military capabilities, and it still uses Russian equipment almost exclusively to this day. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, Syria found itself increasingly isolated in the region – and facing Israel without a powerful foreign patron. Russia has largely recovered from the economic and political turmoil of the late 1990s, however, and a spike in world oil prices since 2001 has returned some of its vigor on the world stage. …
Renewing the relationship with Syria, however, is only the core of a broader push to reassert Russia as a major external player in the Middle East. When Hamas won a parliamentary majority in the Palestinian elections of February 2006, Putin was the first to invite their representatives for meetings. Russia also committed troops and a reconstruction unit to Lebanon after the 2006 war, outside the auspices of the UN. Access the full article>>