Last month, Zain Mustafa, an electrician in rural Syria, received help from an unexpected source: the Russian military. “Soldiers came in trucks carrying loads of food and they were giving it to us . . . they even brought doctors and were treating my wife’s injured leg,” he said from his home near the western city of Hama.
Moscow’s intervention in Syria’s brutal civil war tipped the balance in President Bashar al-Assad’s favour. As Assad forces have consolidated control of the country in recent months, Moscow has become increasingly involved in humanitarian aid operations.
“You have hungry people in ruined houses, you have to do something,” said Yevgeny Primakov, grandson of the late Russian prime minister and diplomat and founder of the Russian Humanitarian Mission (RHM), one of the country’s flagship non-government humanitarian aid groups. “Our military is very gradually learning this work. In Soviet times, our country was very active in these things, but then we lost those capacities. Now we are coming back.”
With Russian president Vladimir Putin eager to end military involvement in Syria, policymakers in Moscow want to secure the peace by winning over hearts and minds.
“We have seen the Americans seemingly win wars quickly — in Afghanistan, in Iraq,” said a Russian former ambassador and Middle East expert. “But they didn’t get the next step right, so now they are still forced to deal with the consequences.”
While the Russian government is pushing the international community to pay for long-term reconstruction, Moscow has become a key actor in short-term aid operations. “Turning the de-escalation zones into humanitarian support zones is an opportunity,” said Grigory Lukyanov, an expert on Russian foreign policy and conflicts at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, adding that Russian humanitarian groups were “hastily being created and gaining power”.
No Russian group has come farther than the Akhmat Kadyrov Public Foundation, the charity group named after the father of Ramzan Kadyrov, the warlord-turned ruler of the Chechen Republic. The involvement of a regime notorious for human rights violations on its own territory has alarmed western aid workers. But Russian humanitarian experts said Chechnya’s shared Muslim faith, the presence of Chechen fighters on both sides of the conflict and the Chechen government’s deep links with Middle Eastern governments allowed the group to make a meaningful contribution.
Since the foundation, backed by the Chechen government, began aid operations in Syria in 2016, it has run aid missions in Damascus, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and eastern Ghouta, according to Dzhambulat Umarov, Chechnya’s information minister. In eastern Ghouta alone, it provided more than 100,000 residents food and water in April and May. “Transport aircraft of the Russian Airforce are actively helping deliver aid to Syria,” Mr Umarov said.
But reliance on the Russian military can be problematic for an aid group. A Russian defence ministry official and two Russian aid experts said the military initially relied on Syrian intelligence for information on where to send humanitarian goods, but found that the aid had failed to reach those in need.
“Now we are putting together our own lists and tell the Syrian authorities where we are going,” the defence official said. However, Russian groups often have to distribute aid through the Syrian Red Crescent, a group aid workers say is too close to the Syrian government. “They [the Red Crescent] are becoming quite controlling of the humanitarian space and trying to dominate,” said a western aid worker.
This is designed to significantly improve Russia’s image in the Middle East and the Arab World as a whole
“That Russian aid is mainly distributed through military channels is a limitation. It cannot reach those who don’t have good relations with Russia in Syria,” Mr Lukyanov said. “This is designed to significantly improve Russia’s image in the Middle East and the Arab World as a whole — to show that Russia also cares about the population.”
Russia has sought to build links with international aid groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross. “This is important for us because Russia is engaged in the conflict but also because it’s one of the closest partners to the Syrian government,” said Magne Barth, head of ICRC’s regional delegation in Moscow. “They have both an understanding and they have influence on how things move.”
Since April last year, Russian humanitarian organisations, Russian government officials and Syrian diplomats have been discussing needs assessment and cargo delivery with western groups including Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières in a working group organised by RHM. “I think everybody is having a debate about how and if you engage with Russia,” said an aid worker in Damascus. The defeat of the rebels in Eastern Ghouta in April had been the “catalyst for the changing mindset”.
Such efforts are fraught with difficulties, as one early discussion between MSF and the Russian defence ministry illustrates. “MSF is balking at the suggestion that their aid should also carry Russian military and Syrian government labels,” said a person briefed on the conversation. “Also, the Syrian government has such a negative view of MSF that it seems hard to imagine they would ever let them in.”
With such hurdles, Moscow’s effort to win over hearts and minds with humanitarian aid is likely to remain an uphill battle.
Mr Mustafa remains wary. He sent his wife to pick up the Russian aid last month for fear he would be asked about his former status. “I used to live under opposition control because I could not go anywhere else — I’m a helpless poor man,” he said in the vigilant tone Syrians usually use when talking to the media in regime-held areas. “Thank god and Russia and our president.”
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