Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with his Syrian counterpart Ahmad Al Shara in Damascus on April 5 is significant not simply because it is historic, but because of what it suggests about Syria’s security policy. Much of the attention around the visit focused on the optics: Mr Zelenskyy was the first president from outside the Arab world to visit post-Assad Syria, and only the second foreign head of state to do so after Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani visited in January 2025.
But the more important development was the announcement of Syrian-Ukrainian talks on security and defence. For Ukraine, Syria is part of the drive to expand geopolitical reach and demonstrate that contesting Russia does not end in Europe. For Syria, co-operation with Ukraine is about security through state repositioning.
The contrast with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s last visit to Syria in January 2020 is telling. Mr Putin did not arrive in Damascus as the representative of a normal bilateral relationship. He arrived as the wartime patron of a regime whose survival depended on Russian military power. His stop in Syria was centred on the Russian command structure, underscoring the hierarchy that had come to define Bashar Al Assad’s relationship with Moscow.
Mr Zelenskyy’s visit carried a different message. It was presented not as a display of military dominance but as a diplomatic and political engagement between two governments with converging interests. That does not mean the relationship is equal in every respect, but it does mean that Syria is trying to move away from the patron-client model that defined Syrian security during the Assad years.
In this way, Syrian-Ukrainian security co-operation is a statement about Syria’s post-Assad sovereignty. By opening a security dialogue with Ukraine, Damascus is signalling that the era in which Syria’s security architecture was tied overwhelmingly to Russia is over, even if Russia continues to have military bases in Syria. Security co-operation with Ukraine allows Syria to show that it is willing to learn from and work with a state that has spent years resisting Russian military pressure rather than depending on it.
Security co-operation between Ukraine and Syria is also a message to Russia and Iran. During the Assad years, Russian military dominance and Iranian regional influence overlapped in Syria, while Russia attacked Ukraine with Iranian-developed drones. For both Damascus and Kyiv, closer security ties now serve as a way of signalling that this older strategic landscape is changing. For Syria, working with Ukraine is a way of demonstrating distance from both Moscow and Tehran without directly provoking either into open confrontation. For Ukraine, the relationship shows Moscow and Tehran that its diplomacy in the Middle East is no longer confined to aid, food security, or symbolic outreach. It is increasingly connected to the region’s hard security questions.
But that does not mean Damascus should be expected to receive advanced Ukrainian military technology in the near future. The likelier forms of military co-operation are military training, defence sector advice, logistics and institutional development for a Syrian army that has been badly degraded.
This matters because Syria’s current leadership is trying to rebuild relations with Arab states, manage Turkey’s influence, avoid direct confrontation with Israel and prevent Russia and Iran from retaining veto power over Syria’s future. In that context, Ukraine becomes useful not because it can transform Syrian military capabilities overnight, but because it offers Syria an additional strategic channel – one that connects Damascus to a wider network that includes Turkey, Gulf states and Western security actors.
Balancing Syria’s foreign relations is crucial as it seeks stability through good relations with all its neighbours. Israel is a major factor behind this policy. Since the fall of Assad, Israel has continued to target Syrian military infrastructure, reflecting its longstanding preference for weak or constrained military capacity on its borders. Israel will not want to see Syria possess advanced weapons that could one day be turned against it. This stance limits what Ukraine can offer Syria in terms of military technology. But Ukraine can support Syrian security indirectly by acting as a political bridge.
Syria’s new leadership wants to pursue some form of security understanding with Israel, but doing so openly remains politically sensitive, both domestically and regionally. In this setting, Ukraine can help create political space for a less confrontational Syrian regional posture. In that sense, Syrian-Ukrainian security co-operation is also about de-escalation: not a traditional alliance, but a framework that could support a more stable balance around Syria.
Syrian-Ukrainian security co-operation should not be read narrowly as a question of whether Kyiv will supply arms or technology to Damascus. Its importance is political before it is military. It signals that post-Assad Syria is trying to secure itself by building a new diplomatic identity: more connected to a broader regional architecture, and more interested in maintaining stability through balancing relationships rather than bolstering its security capabilities.
