Russian company denies losing contract to manage Tartus port in Syria

A Russian company said it was continuing to operate Syria’s Tartus port despite reports of a deal being scrapped.

STG Engineering, which operates Syria’s commercial port of Tartus, said it was continuing to operate as normal, Reuters reported.

The company said the contract had not been cancelled, as some Middle Eastern media outlets had suggested.

In January, three Syrian businessmen and media outlets claimed that Syria’s new administration had cancelled a contract signed under former President Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow in December after a rebel offensive.

The Syrian newspaper Al-Watan quoted the head of Tartus’ customs service, Riyad Judi, at the time, as saying that the investment contract for the port had been cancelled after the Russian company failed to meet the terms of a 2019 deal that included infrastructure investments.

However, Dmitry Trifonov, CEO of Moscow-based STG Engineering, told Reuters that his company continues to operate the port and that no one has informed them of the cancellation of the contract, and that the process itself, he said, would be long and bureaucratic if it had taken place.

“It is impossible to terminate the agreement unilaterally, since it was ratified by both the president and parliament, and no one has informed us,” Trifonov said. “It has to go through parliament and the president. Any statements have no legal basis, because the cancellation of a presidential decree and ratification by the previous parliament is a whole procedure. What someone is saying now is just words.”

Earlier media reports about the port contract named the large Russian construction company Stroytransgaz as the operator. When asked about its role on Friday, February 28, the company said it could not comment on the matter.

“Stroytransgaz JSC is a construction holding company and neither organizationally nor legally had nor has any relation to STG Engineering, which was contracted to manage the port of Tartus,” the statement said.

Separately, Russia, whose troops and aircraft have supported Assad for years in the fight against Syrian rebels, is negotiating with the new Syrian authorities in an attempt to preserve its naval base in Tartus and the Khmeimim air base near the port city of Latakia.

The Tartus facility is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and logistics hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a transshipment point for transferring its military contractors to and from Africa.

USM previously reported that the Russian ship Sparta IV is completing its loading in Tartus.