Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa met Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Wednesday as the Kremlin’s influence in the Middle East wanes.
The Moscow meeting was remarkable given that Russia is harboring Syria’s former president, Bashar al-Assad, whose government was overthrown by rebels led by al-Sharaa. Putin is keen to reboot relations with Damascus to maintain his country’s military bases in Syria, analysts said. But the Kremlin’s diminishing MidEast clout was put in stark relief this week as Arab leaders rushed to Egypt for a US-led Gaza peace summit, leading Moscow to cancel a Russia-Arab conference.
“Russia has not been sidelined diplomatically in the Middle East like this since it intervened in Syria in 2015,” one analyst said.