The authorities of Damascus and Moscow signed this Sunday a memorandum of understanding that will allow Russia to maintain two military bases on the Syrian Mediterranean coast, the Hmeimim airbase and the Tartus naval base, with a “redefinition” of functions agreed upon after a year and a half of negotiations that began with the fall of Bashar El Asad’s regime in December 2024.
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With this new memorandum announced by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs — reproduced by the official Syrian news agency SANA —, the “process of reorganizing the Russian presence on the Syrian coast” will begin, where Damascus will take over the management of civilian facilities — mainly the Hmeimim airport and the fourth commercial dock of the Tartus port — to gradually integrate them into the civil administration.
This marks the end of “a year and a half of intense negotiations and talks” between the new Syrian authorities and Russia, which intervened militarily in the Syrian war in 2015 at El Asad’s request, who was overthrown in December 2024 and has been exiled in Moscow since then.
The military bases will become, according to the text, “joint training and rehabilitation centers,” a process that must be completed within a maximum period of three months.
“This step is the most significant since negotiations began about a year and a half ago, and opens the door to a new stage in Syrian-Russian relations,” added the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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For his part, the president of the Syrian General Authority of Civil Aviation and Air Transport, Omar Hosari, confirmed that this Sunday the Syrian Government has received the Latakia International Airport, adjacent to Hmeimim, which “represents an important step in the process of recovery and commissioning of Syrian airports and their reintegration into the national civil aviation system.” He indicated that the authority’s specialized teams have begun technical and operational evaluation work of the airport, its facilities, and systems, in order to develop a rehabilitation plan.
The Tartus naval base has been used since the 1970s following an agreement between the Soviet Union and Syria, while the Hmeimim airbase was built and used by Russian troops in 2015 for a greater presence in the military intervention in favor of El Asad’s regime.
In 2017, amid a significant rapprochement due to Russian influence in the Middle East, Damascus and Moscow signed a lease treaty for both bases for 49 years that gave full operational powers to the Russian troops.
After El Asad’s fall, these two bases fell out of the control of the new Syrian authorities, so a negotiation process began between Damascus and Moscow to define a new status of their military and diplomatic relations amid the ongoing transition process in the Arab country.
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