Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara hailed a reset in ties with Russia on Wednesday during a visit to Moscow, which once went to war for the former regime in Damascus.
Mr Al Shara met President Vladimir Putin on his first official trip to Russia since seizing power from former Kremlin ally Bashar Al Assad late last year. Talks were taking place on the future of two military bases that Russia had leased from the Assad government.
Also hanging over the meeting is the fate of Bashar Al Assad himself, after he was granted asylum in Russia late last year. Syrian authorities last month issued a warrant for his arrest.
“In the new Syria, we are rebuilding relations with all regional and international countries,” Mr Al Shara said. He said Syria “respects all agreements signed with Russia” and shares close ties with the country.
Mr Putin said Russia had “never treated Syria based on political circumstances or special interests”. He said: “We have been guided solely by the interests of the Syrian people.”
Russia has also offered to help rebuild Syria from its civil war, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
The foreign policy priority of the post-Assad order has been to improve ties with the United States, with help from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In Riyadh in May, Mr Al Shara met US President Donald Trump, who partially lifted US sanctions on Syria.
Tensions with Israel have also eased, after a wave of Israeli attacks on Syrian military targets in July. However, US efforts for a security deal between the two countries have stalled. The presence of Uighur fighters in Syria has also curbed development of ties with China, which had supported the old regime.
The visit to Moscow is only for one day and the talks would centre on the future of the two Russian military bases in Syria, a Syrian official said.
Mr Al Shara did not directly mention the bases in brief televised remarks at the start of the meeting, but spoke of the “historic ties” between the countries and the importance of developing them.
Mr Putin, in turn, described Syria's parliamentary elections earlier this month as a “big success” that would help consolidate society.
Mr Al Shara's Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) rebel group toppled the Assad regime after an 11-day offensive last December, forcing the former president and his top lieutenants to flee to Moscow.
Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, bombing swathes of rebel areas, to prevent the collapse of the regime as Mr Al Shara's forces advanced on the Alawite coastal heartland whose inhabitants underpinned the former system.
In January, Mr Al Shara demanded at a meeting in Damascus that Russia hands over Bashar Al Assad and an estimated $2 billion in liquid assets held by the exiled dictator's family in Russian banks, sources told The National. Russian officials declined to comment.
The Syrian official would not be drawn on whether Mr Al Shara will renew his demand. However, he said that Moscow “is only concerned with keeping its bases in Syria and will do anything to help achieve this goal”.
Another Syrian source said that Mr Al Shara's visit to Moscow had little to do with the fate of Bashar Al Assad, but was rather about carving out options for Syria. Mr Al Shara, the source said, signalled to Mr Putin that Syria is open to buying military spare parts from Russia and keeping the Russian bases in the country.
"He is playing on the edge," said the source, who noted that Mr Al Shara needs to maintain the support of the US.
Mr Al Shara told CBS in an interview broadcast last week that Syria “will use all legal means possible to demand that Bashar Al Assad be brought to justice”. However, “conflict with Russia right now would be too costly for Syria”, he said.
Russia has a base at Tartous and another outside Latakia in Hmeimim. Both are among the most important warm water ports at Moscow's disposal. Its strategic position in the Middle East, along with that of Iran, the Assad regime's other main backer, took a huge hit when the former president was toppled, to the advantage of the United States and its allies in the region.
In a bid to regain its clout, Moscow was due to host a Russian-Arab summit this week, but Mr Putin said it would be postponed due to the halt of hostilities in Gaza.
Hours after the toppling of the Assad regime, Russian officials stopped describing Mr Al Shara and his commanders as terrorists, opened channels with the new order and condemned Israeli attacks on the post-Assad military and militias loyal to the new government.
Relations continued to improve despite sectarian killing and violence in March against Alawites, many of whom had looked to Moscow for help as their sect lost its dominance in majority Sunni Syria under the Assad government.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday that Syria appeared to have “an interest in maintaining our presence there” but that Moscow's role in the country needed to be “reconfigured”.
Mr Lavrov said his government had granted Syria's deposed president “humanitarian” asylum. He suggested that the former president would have been hacked to death had he remained in Syria, a fate that befell Muammar Qaddafi in Libya.
The former Libyan leader was another ally of Russia who was ousted at the beginning of the Arab uprisings in the past decade.
Last month, a Syrian judge issued an arrest warrant for Mr Al Assad on charges of murder and torture, the first legal action against him by the country he ruled for 24 years. However, doubts are being cast about its efficacy, because the former president might qualify for immunity under current laws.
Syria's new government has captured hundreds of officials and security operatives of the Assad regime in recent months, but not the top echelons, most of whom are in Russia.
