Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated his Syrian counterpart, former al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Monday on the occasion of the anniversary of the fall of former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Assad fled the country between December 7 and December 8 after Sharaa’s jihadist militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), stormed Aleppo in late November and critically damaged the position of Assad’s army. After nearly 14 years of civil war, HTS successfully ousted the Syrian military from the city and marched towards Damascus, sending Assad and his family fleeing to Moscow, where they are believed to remain today.
Since taking over the government of Syria, Sharaa has abandoned his jihadist pseudonym “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani” and taken to wearing Western-style suits, touring the world seeking foreign investment for post-war reconstruction. The HTS government has prioritized strengthening friendly ties to potential allied states, including Ukraine. The Assad regime was closely allied to the governments of Russia and Iran, benefitting for years from Russian support. Many political experts have suggested that Russia redirecting resources into the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine left it with less to offer Assad, exposing the latter’s regime and leading to its ruin.
In recognition of the anniversary of Assad fleeing the country, Zelensky published a message congratulating Sharaa and the Syrian people for doing away with the old regime.
“On this day last year, the Assad regime fell. This was a bright day for Syria, the Middle East, and the entire world,” Zelensky wrote. “A day of justice, freedom, and hope. Most importantly, the Syrian people were given the opportunity to restore a normal and safe life.”
Zelensky described Ukraine as moving rapidly to support the new regime once Assad fled the country and seeking closer ties to Sharaa’s Syria.
“We have been there right away, lending a helpful hand. And we stand ready to continue our support. Whenever security expands in any region, the whole world becomes safer,” he wrote. “I congratulate President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the Syrian people on this anniversary and wish them security, stability, and prosperity in the years ahead.”
The Syrian government led by Sharaa, who has since installed an Islamist constitution and dissolved HTS into the Syrian armed forces, celebrated the anniversary with massive military parades and rallies around the country on Monday.
Sharaa himself made an appearance at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where he first announced the fall of the regime a year earlier.
He wore jihadi military fatigues for the first time in public since the civil war ended, delivering a speech condemning the half-century-old Assad dynasty for its human rights abuses and vowing to continue the reconstruction of the war-torn country.
Sharaa also debuted the display of the anniversary gift that the country received from Saudi Arabia: a piece of the kiswa, the cloth that covers the Ka’aba, the building at the heart of Mecca that serves as the holiest site in the religion.
As Zelensky indicated, Ukraine was among the first countries to express interest in establishing ties with the new Syrian regime, having cut ties with Assad in 2022 following the latter’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Ukraine sent a delegation featuring then-Foreign Ministry Andrii Sybiha to Damascus on December 30, less than a month after Assad fled the country.
Zelensky and Sharaa met personally in New York in September, where both had traveled to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Zelesky spoke effusively of the potential for cooperation between the two countries.
“During our negotiations with President of Syria Ahmed al-Sharaa, we also discussed in detail promising sectors for developing cooperation, security threats faced by both countries, and the importance of countering them,” Zelensky wrote on social media at the time. “We agreed to build our relations on the basis of mutual respect and trust.”
Ukraine has, in addition to maintaining communication, supported Syria’s political positions at the U.N. This month, Ukraine was among the countries to vote for a resolution supporting Syria’s claims to sovereignty over the Golan Heights, currently controlled by Israel. The Ukrainian support for the resolution is notable given that Zelensky has been a vocal supporter of Israel, particularly in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the country, and is himself Jewish, one of only three Jewish heads of state alongside the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
While Sharaa has welcomed Ukrainian support, he has not cut ties to Russia completely. During the Assad regime, Syria allowed Russia to maintain military bases in the country, used often during the civil war to attack Sharaa’s and other rebel militias. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his regime have expressed interest in maintaining those bases and cementing a friendly relationship with the new government, even as they offer political asylum to Assad. Sharaa sent a delegation to Russia in early October, shortly after the Sharaa meeting with Zelensky, following Russian claims that the government was interested in helping with “rehabilitating Syria’s energy sector.”
Sharaa himself visited Russia a week later, meeting Putin personally.
“We are trying to restore and redefine in a new way the nature of these relations so there is independence for Syria, sovereign Syria, and also its territorial unity and integrity and its security stability,” he told Putin during their meeting at the Kremlin. “There are bilateral relations and shared interests that bind us with Russia, and we respect all agreements made with it.”
Putin celebrated Sharaa’s “success” and, despite his support for Assad, claimed to view his regime’s collapse positively.
“I believe that this is a great success for you, because it leads to the consolidation of society, and despite the fact that Syria is currently going through difficult times, it will nevertheless strengthen ties and cooperation between all political forces in Syria,” Putin was quoted as telling Sharaa in that meeting.
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