Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, is unlikely to drop its support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, even though it distrusts him and recognizes that his situation is not good, experts told The Jerusalem Post.
A Saudi-backed paper quoted unidentified sources in a report on Sunday that said that Russia is abandoning Assad's regime and removing most officials and military experts.
Nikolay Kozhanov, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Moscow Center and a visiting fellow at Chatham House London, told the Post on Sunday that, while Sunni media reports such as the one in Asharq Al-Awsat should be taken with a "grain of salt," "Russia does not trust Assad 100 percent."
Kozhanov attributes this to two main reasons: the first being that Assad had previously sought a rapprochement with the West and only after the civil war began did the Syrian president turn his attention to his second choice of an alliance with Russia.
Secondly, Russia had asked Assad to get rid of Chechen fighters that had sought refuge in Syria, but he refused. There is even a rumor going around, noted Kozhanov, that these same Chechens are now fighting against the Syrian regime.
"Russia is not fighting for Assad as person, but for the regime" so that jihadists will not overwhelm the country, asserted Kozhanov.
With the rise of Islamic State and the current state of the civil war, Russian-Syrian relations are going through a "stress test," he continued, adding that he has heard some Russian officials and even Syrians voice their disappointment in Assad's stubbornness.
Asked if at some point the Russian government could stop supporting the Syrian regime, Kozhanov responded that Putin's government will not likely pull its support for Assad, but could at some point withdraw "personal support" if there would be an alternative that would guarantee the continuation of the secular regime.
However, at this point, Russia sees Syria as a bulwark against the regional rise of Islamists.
Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, told the Post that the Russians are realists and they have people on the ground that are following developments very closely.
Cohen attributes the evacuation of some Russian diplomats and their families to the deterioration of Assad's position.
Russia may lower the profile of its presence in terms of the number of Russian citizens residing in Syria, but in terms of military aid and other support, "things will continue as usual."
"It is important for the Kremlin to demonstrate that it is a reliable ally and support the regime until it collapses," asserted Cohen.
The Russians clearly view the non-Sunni regimes in the region as their potential allies, though relations with Egypt are even more important than those with Syria, because it is seen as a stable anti-fundamentalist country with important economic and historical ties.
