After Evacuating Tartus, Russian Flotilla Leaves Mediterranean

A Russian military convoy carrying equipment from the naval base at Tartus has exited the Strait of Gibraltar, answering the question of whether Moscow would be repatriating the military gear it had deployed to Syria over the past decade. 

In early December, U.S.-designated terror group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, driving Assad’s Russian military backers to retreat to Tartus, home of the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean. HTS did not attack Russian forces, even though Russia had bombarded HTS and its allies for most of Syria’s 13-year civil war, but the Islamist group did cancel Russia’s 4…