Russian officials make first visit to Damascus since Assad's overthrow

Delegation arrives amid escalating violence in wake of the toppling of its allied regime

A Syrian National Army fighter watches smoke rise from an air strike on a position near the Tishreen Dam in northern Syria. AFP

Senior Russian officials arrived in Damascus on Tuesday for their first meetings with Syria's new leadership under Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), which led the overthrow of Moscow's main Middle East ally, Bashar Al Assad, on December 8.

The visit comes amid increasingly violent fallout from the rebels' victory. In the west, HTS forces have launched a military campaign to subdue members of the former regime. In the east, the Turkish air force has been carrying out raids in support of Syrian forces loyal to Turkey, who launched an offensive against a Kurdish-led militia that controls the north-east soon after Mr Al Assad fled to Moscow.

Russia's Tass state news agency reported that Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who had met Mr Al Assad often since he became president in 2000, and Alexander Lavrentiev, the Kremlin's special envoy for Syria, were among the delegation in Damascus.

Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war saved Mr Al Assad from defeat in 2015. But by the time HTS forces swept through northern Syria towards Damascus last month, a similar rescue had become impossible, or too costly. Now Russia's two bases on the Syrian coast, its main warm-water bases, are located in a country in which Vladimir Putin's government no longer holds sway.

A senior Western diplomat with prior knowledge of the visit said that Ahmad Al Shara, the HTS leader at the head of the new order in Damascus, was showing a high degree of pragmatism by talking with Moscow. "He is in power-consolidation phase and knows that the Russians can still do damage in Syria. He wants to keep them at bay," said the diplomat, who recently met Mr Al Shara in Damascus.

In the last three weeks, Mr Al Shara has sent forces to consolidate HTS's grip on the coastal areas that had provided core support for the Assad regime. According to activists in the area, dozens of people have been executed during the campaign, without trial, on suspicion of having participated in regime violence.

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The other front in northern Syria has been expanding since Mr Assad fell. The fighting there is mainly between the mostly Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian National Army, which was created by Turkey eight years ago as a counterweight to the SDF's expansion in Syria.

Turkish planes on Tuesday attacked the Qara Qurzaq bridge across the Euphrates, a key link on the supply route from SDF-controlled areas to the main battlegrounds around Tishreen Dam to the south, local sources said. It was not clear whether the bridge was destroyed and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Turkey's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that it had "neutralised" 13 Kurdish militants in northern Syria. The militants belonged to the Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, the ministry said, but did not provide further details.

Hundreds of fighters and civilians have been killed on both sides since the Turkey-backed forces launched an offensive last month to push back the SDF from areas near the Euphrates. Holding positions on both banks of the river is crucial for the SDF to maintain the fiefdom it has carved out in the last decade of the Syrian civil war, which takes in parts of the Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Hasakah governorates.

An SDF official said they expect to carry on resisting the offensive, but that this will become more difficult if Turkey intensifies its aerial attacks to cut off SDF supply lines to the western bank of the Euphrates. The main SDF concentrations are in Kurdish rural areas on the eastern bank. "Our casualties have been heavy. So have theirs," the official said.

The SDF withdrew from parts of the east last month in the face of an Arab uprising that broke out after the overthrow of Mr Al Assad by rebels led by HTS, a former offshoot of Al Qaeda that is also supported by Turkey.

HTS has largely stayed away from the war in the east, partly to improve its ties with the United States, diplomats who have met the group's leadership said. In recent weeks it has held talks with the SDF to bring the east under the control of the new authorities in Damascus.

A source affiliated with the Syrian National Army said that the momentum of its campaign had dropped. "The Kurds are counting that the Hayat [HTS] will stay away from the battlefield," he said. "I am not sure they can count on that."

He pointed to comments by the new Defence Minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, who is also an HTS commander. Mr Abu Qasra said last week that talks were continuing with the SDF but that "we are ready for all probabilities".

Differences have not been resolved regarding the status of the SDF in a new, united military, and over natural resources in the area, the sources said. The tribal east is mixed between Arabs and Kurds, who comprised 10 per cent of Syria's 22 million population when the 2011 revolt against the Assad regime began.

The area takes in the Euphrates Valley, and is the source of most of Syria's oil and gas, as well as electricity, wheat and other commodities. Crude oil output was 200,000 barrels a day before 2011 but has fallen by 75 per cent since. The area also contains the bulk of the US military presence in Syria.

The SDF has been the ground component in the US's fight against ISIS in Syria, although it engaged in military co-operation with the former Assad regime. Its forerunners were aligned with Mr Al Assad during the civil war and helped him crush a peaceful protest movement in 2011, and later capture rebel-held eastern parts of Aleppo city.

But since Mr Al Assad's fall, the US has shared intelligence with HTS and US security officials have met members of the group in a third country, according to a report over the weekend in The Washington Post.