Shayrat Air Base

Built in the 1960s, Shayrat (FAA identifier OS65) sits about 40 kilometers southeast of Homs and has two runways along with roughly 40 hardened aircraft shelters. It is the home station of the Syrian Air Force's 50th Air Brigade, historically comprising three fighter squadrons flying MiG-23 and Su-22 aircraft. According to the Trump administration, the base was also believed to house a chemical weapons storage depot.

Russia began periodically using Shayrat as a stopover and logistics point starting in late 2015, expanding its runways that December to accommodate Russian aircraft, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. By February 2016, the Russian military had doubled its attack helicopter presence at the base to eight helicopters, and a Russian artillery brigade took up position nearby. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy reported that Russia used Shayrat as a transit hub and resupply point for the Syrian military, easing congestion at its main Khmeimim air base and providing forward refueling and rearming for Russian aircraft. Russia's Defense Ministry denied at the time that it planned to establish a permanent second Russian air base at the site.

Shayrat's highest-profile moment came on April 7, 2017, when the United States launched a Tomahawk cruise missile strike on the base in response to a chemical weapons attack Washington attributed to the Assad government. Russian use of the base appears to have wound down by around 2018. The base was struck again by Israeli airstrikes in November 2022 and, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, once more during the intense wave of Israeli strikes on Syrian military sites that followed the fall of the Assad government in December 2024.

Since Assad's ouster, Russia's negotiations over its remaining Syrian military presence have centered on the Khmeimim air base and Tartus naval base, not Shayrat. A memorandum of understanding between Moscow and Damascus in August 2026 restructured the status of those two facilities into joint training and qualification centers, but did not reference Shayrat. Russian use of Shayrat following Assad's fall has not been reliably confirmed in open-source reporting.