This update highlights
why Russia remains an unfit partner to fight ISIS and al Qaeda in
Syria. See the new Institute for the Study of War and
Critical Threats Project report on Putin's Real Syria Agenda here.
By Jonathan Mautner
Threats to regime security across
Syria will likely challenge Russia’s ability to provide decisive air support throughout
the country, notwithstanding the resumption of aggressive Russian air
operations against opposition terrain in western Aleppo and northern Idlib Provinces
from March 3 – 19. The surge in Russian airstrikes in northern Syria signals regime
preparations to clear the targeted areas with ground forces, but opposition groups
likely preempted that course of action by launching a concerted offensive in the
vicinity of regime-held Hama City in central Syria on March 21. Opposition factions
seized no fewer than eight towns in northern Hama Province from pro-regime
forces within hours,
indicating that Russia may need to divert significant air assets from northern
Syria in order to secure strategic regime interests in the country’s central
corridor. Russia can likely conduct high tempo air operations against
opposition forces on both fronts, but it cannot do so and maintain its current
campaigns against ISIS in eastern
Homs and Aleppo
Provinces and opposition groups in Syria’s south. Pro-regime forces,
moreover, are also vying to break ISIS’s ongoing
siege of the Deir ez Zour Military Airport in eastern Syria and to repel a
recently-launched opposition
offensive in Damascus City. The confluence of these proliferating threats,
the finite supply of Russian airframes in Syria, and the regime’s want for
sufficient combat effective ground forces indicates that Russia will have to
identify regime security priorities and deploy its air assets accordingly. Notably,
the pro-regime alliance has struggled to triage effectively in the past, ceding Palmyra to
ISIS merely two days before securing the surrender
of opposition-held Aleppo City in December 2016. This experience counsels that
Russian air power alone—whatever its allocation—will not enable pro-regime
forces to secure Syria in all of its corners.
The following graphic depicts
ISW’s assessment of Russian airstrike locations based on reports from local
Syrian activist networks, statements by Russian and Western officials, and
documentation of Russian airstrikes through social media. This map represents
locations targeted by Russia’s air campaign, rather than the number of
individual strikes or sorties. The graphic likely under-represents the extent
of the locations targeted in Eastern Syria, owing to a relative lack of
activist reporting from that region.
High-Confidence
Reporting. ISW places high confidence in reports corroborated by
documentation from opposition factions and activist networks on the ground in
Syria deemed to be credible that demonstrate a number of key indicators of
Russian airstrikes.
Low-Confidence Reporting. ISW
places low confidence in reports corroborated only by multiple secondary
sources, including from local Syrian activist networks deemed credible or
Syrian state-run media.