For years Russia and Syria were key partners – Moscow gained access to Mediterranean air and naval bases and Damascus received military support for its fight against rebel forces.
Now, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, many Syrians want to see Russian forces go but their interim government says they are open to further cooperation.
“Russia's crimes here were indescribable,” said Ahmed Taha, a rebel leader in Douma, six miles northeast of the capital Damascus.
The city was once a thriving place in an area known as the “bread basket” of Damascus. And Ahmed Taha was once a civilian, working as a tradesman when he took up arms against the Assad regime after violent protests were suppressed in 2011.
Entire residential areas in Douma are now in ruins after some of the fiercest fighting in Syria's nearly 14-year civil war.
Moscow entered the conflict in 2015 to support the regime when it was losing ground. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later said that at the time of the intervention, Damascus was just weeks away from being overrun by rebels.
The Syrian operation showed Russian President Vladimir Putin's desire to be taken more seriously after widespread international criticism of his annexation of Crimea.
In the siege of Eastern Ghouta, civilians and rebels were surrounded for five years (BBC)
Moscow said it tested 320 different weapons in Syria.
He also received a 49-year lease on two military bases on the Mediterranean coast – the Tartus naval base and the Hmeimim air base. This allowed the Kremlin to rapidly expand its influence in Africa, serving as a springboard for Russian operations in Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
Despite the support of Russia and Iran, Assad could not prevent his regime from collapsing. But Moscow sheltered him and his family.
Now, many Syrian civilians and rebel fighters see Russia as a supporter of the Assad regime that helped destroy their homeland.
“The Russians came to this country and helped the spies, the oppressors, and the invaders,” said Abu Hisham, as he celebrated the fall of the government in Damascus.
Russia should leave Syria, just as Iran has left, says Mouna Ali Mansour from the village of Hafir al-Tahta (BBC)
The Kremlin has always denied it, saying it was only targeting jihadist groups like IS or al-Qaeda.
But the United Nations and human rights groups accused the regime and Russia of committing war crimes.
In 2016, when the densely populated East Aleppo was attacked, Syrian and Russian forces carried out relentless airstrikes, “claiming hundreds of lives and reducing hospitals, schools and markets to rubble,” according to UN report.
In Aleppo, Douma and elsewhere, the regime attacked rebel-held areas, cut off food and medicine supplies, and proceeded to bomb them until armed opposition groups surrendered.
Russia also negotiated cease-fires and agreements to surrender rebel towns and cities, such as Douma in 2018.
Across Syria, and here in Douma, entire neighborhoods were in ruins after years of regime and Russian airstrikes (BBC)
Ahmed Taha was among the rebels there who agreed to surrender in exchange for safe passage out of the city after a five-year siege by the Syrian army.
He returned to Douma in December as part of the rebel offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We are back home in spite of Russia, in spite of the regime and everyone who supported it,” says Taha.
He has no doubts that the Russians should leave: “For us, Russia is an enemy.”
It's a sentiment shared by many people we speak to.
Even the leaders of Syria's Christian communities, who promised to protect Russia, say they have had little help from Moscow.
In Bab Touma, the old Christian quarter of Damascus, the Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church says: “We didn't know Russia or anyone else from the outside world protecting us.”
“The Russians were here for their own gains and goals,” Ignatius Aphrem II tells the BBC.
Other Syrian Christians were less diplomatic.
“When they first came in, they said: 'We came here to help you,' said a man called Assad. “But instead of helping us, they destroyed Syria even more.”
The future of Russian bases in Syria is now a matter of negotiation (AFP)
Sharaa, who is now the de facto leader of Syria, said in a An interview with the BBC last month that he would do that not refusing to allow the Russians to stay, and he said that the relationship between the two countries was “strategic”.
Moscow seized on his words, with Foreign Minister Lavrov agreeing that Russia was “very similar to our Syrian friends”.
But the connections may not be easy to find in the post-Assad future.
Syria's military reconstruction will require a completely new start or continued reliance on Russian supplies, which would mean at least some kind of relationship between the two countries, says Turki al-Hassan, a defense analyst and retired Syrian army general. to quit
Syria's military cooperation with Moscow predates the Assad regime, Hassan says. Almost all the equipment he has is produced by the Soviet Union or Russia, he explains.
“Since its inception, the Syrian military has been armed with Eastern Bloc weapons.”
Between 1956 and 1991 Syria received about 5,000 tanks, 1,200 fighter planes, 70 ships and many other systems and weapons from Moscow worth more than $26bn (£21bn), according to Russian estimates.
Much of this was in support of Syria's wars against Israel, which have largely defined the country's foreign policy since independence from France in 1946.
More than half of that amount was left unpaid when the Soviet Union collapsed but in 2005 president Putin wrote off 73% of the debt.
For now, Russian officials have taken a conciliatory but cautious approach toward the interim rulers that have affected Russia's long-standing friendship.
Vassily Nebenzia, the UN ambassador in Moscow, said that recent events had marked a new stage in the history of what he called “the brotherly people of Syria”. He said Russia would provide both humanitarian and reconstruction aid to allow Syrian refugees to return home.
