Bashar al-Assad meets with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, 15 March 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE / VLADIMIR GERDO /SPUTNIK /KREMLIN
Deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has arrived in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Sunday evening, citing an anonymous Kremlin source.
“Assad and members of his family have arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds,” the source told TASS.
The TASS report added that Moscow believed the United Nations should oversee talks on the future of Syria, and said that the leaders of the anti-government rebels, whose sudden advance on Damascus forced Assad to flee the country on Sunday morning, had guaranteed the safety of Russia’s military bases and diplomatic personnel in Syria.
The whereabouts of Assad have been unclear throughout the day, with speculation growing at one point that he may have been killed in a plane crash following the sudden disappearance from radar of a plane that took off from Damascus Airport on Sunday morning, on which several sources said the dictator and his wife had been travelling,
Earlier, though it made no mention of the fact that Assad was on his way to Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that he had voluntarily made the decision to resign as president and to leave Syria, adding that he had instructed his officials in Damascus to undertake the peaceful transfer of power to the rebel groups now in control of the capital.
