Russian companies want to extract minerals in Syria and profit on rebuilding the country.
In Moscow, they count on joint projects in oil production, construction of power plants, rebuilding the railway, roads.
“We will earn money together with the Syrians, while the Syrian side will invest its part in the economic recovery,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said.
The question of security remains open to Russians. Igor Yushkov, expert of the National Energy Security Fund, tells Kommersant that only state-run companies will work there.
First of all, it’s ‘Rostec’, which is pretty close to the power bloc and will be able to easily negotiate with the military about labor safety. The company is capable of building oil refineries. Of course, Gazprom can join it in the gas sector. In the oil sector it will be “Rosneft”,” says Yushkov.
Russian businesses already cooperate with the government of Syria: under the control of Gennady Timchenko, ‘Stroytransgaz’ is developing phosphate deposits in the Arab Republic.
The plans of Russian business became known after Putin’s decision to withdraw part of the military contingent from Syria.
Two days after Putin’s order it became known that Russia would create a full-fledged naval base in Syria, which would be able to accept ships of the first rank with a displacement of more than 10 thousand tons.
Agnieszka Legucka, an expert at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, director of the Vistula University, says that Russia’s presence in the Middle East has become possible because of the weakness of the Middle East policy of the West — above all, Barack Obama’s inability to cope with the civil war in Syria and decide on whose side they should be.
“At first, there were failed attempts to stabilize the situation in Iraq, and now there are difficulties in stabilizing Afghanistan. The West is leaving the place — and Russia immediately made use of it. It cannot be said that Russia is becoming stronger — on the global scale, it is rather getting weaker, but it sees places which it can actively enter,” says Agnieszka Legucka.
Experts say such places are Afghanistan and North Africa. After visiting Syria, Putin flew to Egypt, which caused speculation about the military base over the Nile.
“The Kremlin’s trade with Egypt can have various aspects: even the issue of returning Russian tourists to their resorts,” says Vladimir Kopchak from the Center for Army, Conversion, and Disarmament Studies (Kyiv).
Will Belarusians appear in Syria?
In the case of Russia’s decision to switch to other points on the regional map, Belarusians may help it stabilize the situation in Syria.
“The signal from Moscow about the desire to introduce the peacekeeping contingent of the CSTO into the Syrian escalation zones looks symptomatic,” Kopchak asserts.
The military expert Alyaksandr Alesin stated back in April that there is a great possibility that Belarusian peacekeepers will be in Syria .
