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The arrival of the first primary Russian diplomat to Damascus from the fall of Bashar al-Assad launches negotiations on the fate of Moscow’s bases in Syria.

By Paul Sonne and Christina Goldbaum

Paul Sonne has in Berlin and Christina Goldbaum from Damascus.

The time had come to bend the knee — or at least bend to reality.

A delegation of Russian diplomats arrived on Tuesday in a caravan of white trucks for a summit in Damascus and a little enviable mission: to get rid of al-Assad.

To do this, the delegation would have to win over other people who had been ruthlessly bombed by the Russian army, helping Mr. al-Assad, for years.

Ahmed al-Shara, who had survived a decade of Russian air attacks, is like the new interim leader of Syria. He stopped at the presidential palace and faced Kremlin envoys for a long -awaited calculation.

The resulting conversations, the first between Moscow and Damascus since the end of the war of approximately 14 years, have been resolved. But they represented the beginning of the potentially written negotiations on the role, if there is, Russia will play in the postwar Syria, after having lost their candidacy to stay Mr. -Assad in power.

The meeting demonstrated the kind of geopolitical horse-trading that has begun in the aftermath of Syria’s civil war — with the potential to remake the Middle East. World powers are jockeying for influence, as Syria’s fledgling leadership tries to win legitimacy, security and aid through disciplined and stony-eyed realpolitik.

“I think that the general air in Damascus is:” Syrians we want to fight with anyone at this stage, adding our former enemies, “said Charles Lister, principal researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington. ” Dishevelation and degradation and pragmatism are the names of the game. “

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