Seven years after planting its flag on Syrian soil to rescue a faltering regime, Russia now finds itself negotiating its continued presence with the very forces that replaced it. A four-vessel convoy docking at Tartous on September 7 marked the first resupply under a new August memorandum — a quiet but deliberate signal that Moscow intends to hold what it has, even as the ground beneath its Mediterranean strategy has fundamentally shifted. Great powers rarely surrender their footholds gracefully, and Russia is no exception, threading diplomacy through the eye of a needle that includes sanction