Abstract
Drawing heavily on Andrej Kreutz’s Russia in the Middle East and
Robert Freedman’s “Russia and the Arab Spring: A Preliminary
Appraisal” along with numerous news sources, this essay serves a twofold
purpose of sketching out a broad history of Russian-Syrian relations
and of analyzing in depth Russia’s response to the recent conflict in
Syria. The purpose of this essay is to update and synthesize a broad-butscattered
literature on Russian-Syrian relations and to combine it with
recent works examining the influence of Russia on the Syrian Civil War.
The author ultimately asserts that for better or for worse Putin’s Russia
has decided to risk significantly damaging the relationships it has built
with the broader Arab world, Israel, and the West in order to maintain its
strategic and historic ties to Iran and Syria, protect its economic interests
in the Middle East, and hamper Western efforts to orchestrate Middle-
Eastern politics.