ALEPPO — As relations between the Syrian regime and Russia develop with the signing of scientific, economic and cultural agreements, Syrians from all walks of life are signing up for Russian language courses in regime-controlled parts of the country. Opportunities to learn and develop Russian in Syria range from contests like the "Russian Olympics" to universities and private courses offered by associations such as Al-Wafi.

Vadim Zaichikov, the director of the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Beirut, visited Al-Baath University in Homs in April to discuss the introduction of the Russian language into the curriculum and creating a Russian language department. Al-Baath is the third largest university in Syria, offering its 140,000 students prestigious music degrees as well as technical ones such as oil and gas engineering. The university’s newly appointed dean, Abdelbaset Al-Khatib, is a graduate of St. Petersburg State University.

In the capital, the University of Damascus opened a department of Russian language and literature in November 2014 and relocated it to a new, larger building last year. The department has become the univeristy's largest foreign-language department, claims Sputnik News, a news platform run by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya. Its first batch of Russian language students graduated in October 2018, and the Ministry of Higher Education created a Russian center for coordination and cooperation at the University of Damascus in 2017.

Radwan Rahal, a lead Russian language instructor at the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education, told Sputnik News in August that the Russian language was introduced in 2014 as a foreign language in Syrian schools for grades 7-11 and he expects the number of secondary students studying Russian to hit 22,000 in the next academic year.