Syria’s policy towards Russia is anchored in three domains: military strategic, symbolic and economic. Power politics dominates through these domains, each enabling Damascus to compensate for its growing regional strategic weakness and to preserve her role as an Arab regional power. Syria’s power politics is designed to counter challenges and threats generated by regional conflict in the military and normative realms. The meaning of those threats is constructed by Syria’s relative position in the international system and by identity factors. This observation allows to highlight the compatibility between the Realist and Constructivist paradigms: far from obeying to a predetermined pattern, the convergence of Syrian and Russian wills of power is being constantly adjusted.