Ukrainian-Syrian Relations Fall Apart

Earlier this week Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that a new “iron curtain” was descending between Russia and the West. This curtain is not dividing the world into two, but rather three – those taking Russia’s side, those taking Ukraine’s and those that attempt to maintain relations with both or avoid getting drawn into the conflict altogether.

Those parts of Syria controlled by President Assad are firmly in the first camp. This was demonstrated in the first few months of the conflict by Syria voting against UN Resolutions that condemned the Russian invasion. Weeks into the conflict as the urban fighting near Kiev slowed down and eventually reversed the Russian advance, news broke that Syrian fighters were to travel to Ukraine as reinforcements. “Russia is preparing for a greater battle” in Ukraine and Syrian fighters are likely to take part, said Ahmad Hamada, a Syrian army defector who is now a military analyst based in Turkey.

Yet these acts did not see a total severance of relations between Kiev and Damascus. The Ukrainian side closed the Embassy of Ukraine in Damascus back in 2016 and ordered the closing of the Embassy of Syria in Ukraine in 2018. Instead, relations were truly severed this week; “There will no longer be relations between Ukraine and Syria,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram, adding that the sanctions pressure against Syria “will be even greater”. The trigger was Syria’s recognition of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, the first state other than Russia to do so.

Syria’s relationship with Russia of course runs deep and far deeper than Moscow’s decision to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2015. Since the 1950s, tens of thousands of Syrians have been educated in Russia, while Russian expertise has created much of Syria's infrastructure, with the a Syrian ministry of economy estimating that the Russians are responsible for 90 industrial facilities and pieces of infrastructure, one-third of Syria's electrical power capability, one-third of its oil-producing facilities and a threefold expansion of land under irrigation - aided in part by assistance with building the massive Euphrates dam.

Damascus is so indebted to Moscow that the decision to recognise Donetsk and Lugansk should hardly come as a surprise. "The Syrian regime is trying to give pseudo-subjectivity to the Russian occupation administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the order of their curators in the Kremlin," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry noted.

The Ukrainian side is also starting the procedure for imposing a trade embargo against Syria, as well as imposing other sanctions against Syrian legal entities and individuals. Yet trade between the two countries has never been vast with Ukraine’s main export being maize and Syria’s to Ukraine being natural calcium phosphates; natural aluminium calcium phosphates and phosphatic chalk.

In 2021, trade between Syria and Ukraine reached USD 24.2 million, a 68 percent increase compared with 2020. Syria’s exports stood at USD 20.75 million, while its imports stood at USD 3.43 million, making Ukraine one of Syria’s most profitable trade partners. What is more despite a plethora of sanctions against Syria, there have been continual reports and evidence of countries like Ukraine being used as a middleman for the export of Syrian phosphates into Europe. Despite the risks of sanctions violations, Serbia, Ukraine, and four European Union states have reportedly imported over $80 million worth of Syrian phosphates since 2019. So, Syria will pay an economic price for falling in line with Moscow, yet it has essentially mortgaged its foreign policy to Russia to whom it owes an existential debt.

Other repercussions from this international fallout may come if any of the Syrian fighters currently battling on Russia’s side in Ukraine, are captured or killed. Will these fighters be included in any of the now frequent prisoner swaps between the two sides or perhaps more likely they could face the more punitive punishments that Russia is handing out to foreign fighters it captures.

The falling apart of Ukrainian-Syrian relations is clearer a footnote to the major conflict between Kiev and Moscow, but it is one that says much about the sovereignty and levels of independence of Assad’s Syria.