Russia’s top Kremlin spokesman confirmed on Monday that strongman Vladimir Putin made the ultimate decision to grant political asylum to former Syrian tyrant Bashar Assad and his family.
Assad disappeared in the late hours of Saturday, shortly after Sunni jihadists affiliated with the terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) announced they were entering Damascus. HTS, an al-Qaeda offshoot, mounted a surprise offensive to topple the decades-old Assad family regime that resulted in the capture of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, in late November. Reports from the ground suggested that many Syrian soldiers abandoned their posts – fatigued by low pay and little munitions. Some reports indicated that Assad’s tanks and fighter jets were unusable because they had no fuel to run.
The capture of Damascus has largely been accepted as the end to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 when Assad violently repressed protests against his rule by the Sunni Arab majority. Fighting continues, however, in the northwest, of the country, where Turkish-backed militias are attempting to dismantle the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed coalition of fighters consisting mostly of members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ). The YPJ were instrumental in the destruction of the Islamic State “caliphate” in Raqqa in 2017. Neither the pro-Turkish Syrian National Army (SNA) nor the YPG are in active combat with HTS.
The Russian government ultimately confirmed that Assad had landed in Moscow on Sunday.
File/A man sits in front of a poster depicting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin and reading in Arabic “Syria stands with the Russian Federation”, in Syria’s port city of Tartus on July 24, 2022. (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP via Getty Images)
The next day, top Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin was personally involved in approving the asylum request from Assad. Russia invested years of military support for the Assad regime in Syria alongside Assad’s most influential patron, Iran.
“Such decisions certainly cannot be made without the head of state. It was his decision,” Peskov confirmed. On Tuesday, Peskov clarified that Assad chose to resign on his own, refusing to elaborate.
The U.S. outlet Politico noted that, in addition to Peskov, a Russian diplomat in Austria, Mikhail Ulyanov, issued a statement on social media in which he proclaimed, “Russia does not betray friends in difficult situations,” referring to Assad.
In reality, the Russian government has a poor modern track record of supporting allies such as Assad. The Russian military did little to stop the rapid advance of HTS in the past month. Prior to the collapse of the Assad regime, Moscow entirely abandoned Armenia, a longtime ally, when Turkish ally Azerbaijan invaded the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, engaging in the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian Christian population with the help of Turkish Bayraktar drones. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian withdrew from the Russian lead Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) this year and announced last week that Yerevan’s ties with Moscow were at the “point of no return” after the Nagorno-Karabakh disaster.
In Syria, against the Islamist government of Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have been instrumental in the defeat of a Russian ally. Reuters reported this week that HTS leaders reached out to Ankara and described their plan to topple Assad to the Turkish government six months ago. A month after these talks allegedly occurred, Erdogan abruptly announced his intention to seek peace talks with Assad, who he had promised to oust in 2016. The Turkish government would later complain that Assad did not respond “positively” to that overture.
“We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror,” Erdogan declared in 2016, explaining a Turkish invasion of Syria at the time. Erdogan would go on to approve multiple invasions of Syria in the name of erasing the Kurdish presence on the Turkish border.
UK Joins Rush of European States Suspending Syrian Refugee Claims After Damascus Falls to Islamistshttps://t.co/gc8DXiZZwO
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 10, 2024
The fall of the Assad regime will likely mean that Russia’s influence in Syria is significantly diminished. Russia operates several military bases in the country and its ties to Assad granted it access to the Mediterranean Sea, which international observers expect to no longer be the case. The Kremlin has insisted it is taking “all necessary precautions” with its armed forces.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Peskov gave away little on how Russia views its future in Syria but promised that Moscow would play a role in the “dialogue” of reconstructing the country.
“Now, of course, is the best time for a thorough analysis of the unfolding events. It is difficult at the moment to predict what will follow after this period of uncertainty,” he said, according to the news agency Tass. “We will continue this dialogue, we have coinciding interests with many countries, with a number of countries in the region.”
“We have very extensive cooperation, both on trade and economy and on other things. And we intend to continue with all these processes,” he added, suggesting some normalization with HTS is possible.
HTS is a Russia-designated terrorist organization. The United States also considers it a foreign terrorist organization and currently has an active $10 million bounty out for information leading to the arrest of its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
