Russia finds navigating new development tricky in Syria
Syria is slowly being seen less as a military liability and more as an investment opportunity, though there are still many potential challenges.
Until recently, the system of checks and balances that foreign stakeholders sought to build in Syria relied primarily on military means, but now there is a more pronounced leaning toward economic methods, especially by Russia.
For example, a new bridge connects Russia’s mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, which can become the main transportation route from Russia to Syria and help restore Syria’s infrastructure, said Georgy Muradov, the deputy chairman of the Crimean Council of Ministers, when he spoke in February at a forum on Russian-Syrian business cooperation.
The $3 billion, 12-mile span opened almost simultaneously with a May 14 ceremony to lay the foundation stone of a Russian-Syrian tourist site in Manara, in Syria’s Tartus province. The two developments have certain things in common. Each project involves a person believed to belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, and both men have been on EU and US sanctions lists. Construction of the $3 billion Crimean Bridge, also known as the Kerch Strait Bridge, has been run by billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, one of Putin’s friends since childhood. The Manara project is linked to Gennady Timchenko’s construction company, Stroytransgaz. Timchenko, a Russian oligarch, is another of Putin’s old friends.
Other developments are also in the works. In April at the Yalta International Economic Forum, Crimea signed a memorandum of intent with Syria’s port city of Latakia for projects worth 62 billion rubles ($997 million).
