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Russia has reportedly reached an agreement with select elements of the Syrian opposition about control over Russian military bases in Syria, but it remains unclear if the alleged agreement ensures the security of Russia's bases in Syria in the long-term.
Russian forces continue to make tactical gains south of Pokrovsk as they attack into Ukrainian weak points and attempt to conduct a turning maneuver to directly assault Pokrovsk from the south.
Russia's force posture around Syria continues to reflect the Kremlin's current cautious and indecisive response to the fall of Bashar al Assad's regime. Sentinel-2 satellite imagery from December 10 shows that Russian ships have still not returned to Syria's Port of Tartus and that the Russian Mediterranean Sea Flotilla is still in a holding pattern about eight to 15km away from Tartus. Open-source analyst MT Anderson identified four Russian ships within this radius as of December 10—the Admiral Golovko Gorshkov-class frigate, the Admiral Grigorovich Grigorovich-class frigate, the Novorossiysk Improved Kilo-class submarine, and the Vyazma Kaliningradneft-class oiler.
The Kremlin continues to cautiously signal that it can ensure the security of Russian military bases in Syria in the short-term but notably has expressed uncertainty about the long-term future of the military bases against the backdrop of the volatile and rapidly evolving political situation in Syria.
The rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria – a regime that the Kremlin helped prop up since 2015 – is a strategic political defeat for Moscow and has thrown the Kremlin into a crisis as it seeks to retain its strategic military basing in Syria.
Russian forces have resumed their offensive operations directly aimed at seizing Pokrovsk through a turning maneuver from the south after successfully widening their salient south and southeast of the town. Russian forces, including elements of the 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]), began advancing further west and northwest of Selydove (southeast of Pokrovsk) along the Petrivka-Pustynka-Zhovte line south of Pokrovsk in late November 2024 after mainly focusing their offensive efforts on widening the salient south of Selydove and eliminating the Ukrainian pockets north and south of Kurakhove.
Russian forces have not yet evacuated the Russian naval base in Tartus, Syria as of December 6, but it remains unclear whether Russia will keep its vessels at the port as Syrian rebels continue to advance swiftly across regime-held territory.
A pro-Russian and anti-Western candidate unexpectedly won the first round of the Romanian presidential election on November 24 due to likely Russian electoral interference and an effective large-scale TikTok influence campaign. Far-right Romanian political parties also made significant gains in the December 1 Romanian parliamentary elections. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election on December 6 following the declassification of Romanian intelligence documents outlining — likely Russian — electoral interference.
Mounting evidence continues to personally implicate Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials in the forced deportation and "re-education" of Ukrainian children in Russia. The US Department of State and Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab published a report on December 3 detailing the role of Putin, Kremlin Commissioner on Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, members of Russia's ruling United Russia party, Russia's Ministry of Education, and occupation officials in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in at least 314 confirmed cases of child deportation from occupied Ukraine.
Prominent voices within the Russian information space continue to emphasize that Russian President Vladimir Putin is uninterested in a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine that results in anything less than total Ukrainian capitulation.