On August 26 last year, Moscow and Damascus signed an agreement on the deployment of Russian warplanes and military personnel at the Khmeimim air base in Syria's Latakia province. This deal kick-started Russia's military intervention in the country on September 30, 2015.

Start of the operation

The bilateral agreement remained confidential for a few months before its text was finally published on Russia's official portal of government information last January. It gave the green light to the country's military presence in Syria for an open-ended period of time.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime was in dire straits by the middle of 2015. The risk that Assad's government would fall was a determining factor in Moscow's decision to provide military assistance, Fyodor Lukyanov, who chairs the presidium of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, told DW.

Russia's military group in Syria included 48 fighter jets and helicopters, while the military personnel amounted to between 2,000 and 5,000 people, according to Russia's Tass news agency. Moscow was also secretly sending mercenary fighters to Syria, who were employed by Wagner's group, a private military company, the Russian online portal "RBK" reported Thursday. As many as 2,500 of the company's contractors, overseen by Russian secret services, were deployed near Latakia and Aleppo last year, the report said. The group is being financed by the Russian government and "high-profile businessmen," RBK reported, citing a source in the Defense Ministry and people familiar with Russia's operation in Syria. Participating in armed conflicts as a mercenary is forbidden by Russian law.

Allegations of killing civilians

The support provided by the Russian air force helped strengthen Syrian government troops. After going on the offensive, they had won back the historic city of Palmyra and several other strategic towns from "Islamic State" (IS) fighters by early 2016. At the same time, the US and the European Union repeatedly accused Russia of targeting opposition forces and civilians in Syria.

As of August 2016, human rights organizations estimated the number of civilians killed by Russian bombs at between 2,000 and 3,000 people. The Defense Ministry in Moscow has rejected the allegations. According to a confidential NATO report obtained by Germany's "Focus" magazine in March, only 20 percent of Russian airstrikes targeted IS positions. The rest were attacks on other military groups, including the Syrian opposition. The report also made note of the Russian air force's efficiency in Syria.

Analysts believe that Russia's military operation could facilitate reconciliation. "Due to Russia's intervention, a strong balance of forces arose in Syria", Margarete Klein, an expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told DW. "That gave an impulse to the process of peacemaking."

Russia's achievements

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military to withdraw the main part of its armed forces from Syria. The move followed a partial ceasefire in the country agreed with the US a month earlier. By then, Russia's Defense Ministry had spent 33 billion rubles ($508 million, 455 million euros) on the operation, according to Putin.

"The military intervention allowed not only for the strengthening of Assad's position but the position of Russia in the Middle East as well," said Klein. "It is hardly possible to make any decision in Syria without Russia or against its will."

Another important step made by Moscow, experts said, was returning to a dialogue with the US on an equal footing, at least on Syria-related issues.

"Since Russia began to play one of the major roles in the Syrian conflict, Washington has started to take Moscow seriously," Lukyanov said, adding that the bilateral dialogue was focused primarily on the situation in Ukraine.

However, Moscow seems to have failed to use the dialogue on Syria to soften the position of Western countries on the Ukrainian conflict, argued Klein.

Risks in Syria

The Kremlin also failed to hand control of the situation in Syria to Damascus, Lukyanov said. Assad's army couldn't build on the success achieved with the help from Moscow and fulfill the remaining military tasks, he said, adding that the heavy fighting between the government's military forces and rebels in Aleppo earlier this month made that very clear.

"Russia has clearly become a party in this war", said Klein, adding that this negatively affected Moscow's ties with Turkey. Due to its presence in Syria, Russia also found itself in the crosshairs of IS, which increased the risk of terror attacks in the country, she explained.

Russia is unlikely to be able to fully withdraw its troops from Syria in the foreseeable future, the analysts said. But Moscow's plans in Syria are still not to be compared with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 or the US intervention in Iraq, Lukyanov argued. "Russia will not carry out a full-fledged land operation", he said.