Russian foreign policy towards Syria (2011-2018)

The purpose of this research is to address the political structure of Russia, the nature of political events that happened in Syria from 2011 to 2018 and the outcomes of regional events in order to reveal longstanding ends Russia has wanted to achieve in the Middle East. Likewise, the international parties who were for and against Russia with regard to the events where Syria was involved has been addressed in the research. Russia's aims and attitudes towards intervention with such events in order to regain its position as a strong rival of super powers on the international arena and to restore past reputation of the Soviet Union have been also studied. At first Russia interfered with Syria acting as the mediator between Syrian regime and Syrian opposition in order to compensate for the events that it experienced during similar events in Libya. Moreover; it acted based on the principle that Syrian folk was entitled to change. Hence it sent a message to the president of Syria (Bashar al-Assad) that he establishes a dialogue with Syrian opposition and do reform. However, as the conflicts got more aggressive and Syrian government started to suppress the demonstrators, Russia's attitude suddenly changed and blamed the events on Syrian government and the opposition. The reason why Russia did this was that it acted based on the principle of peace-oriented solution as it stated itself. Thereafter Russia's diplomatic intervention that supported Syrian regime began and several agreements were entered into during such process. Russia's intervention became more than a diplomatic action and turned rapidly into a military intervention in 2015 after Bashar Al-Assad lost several regions. Subsequently, Russia did military preparations on Syrian territory and started to provide military and political support to Syrian government until this research was completed.