Syria's Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Russia, where they have been granted asylum, according to Russian news outlets citing a Kremlin source. The Interfax news agency reported an unnamed source saying, " President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds."
Bashar al-Assad's arrival in Moscow comes amid reports that he may have been killed in a plane crash after a Syrian aircraft went off radar according to data from the Flightradar website, suggesting that the ousted president may have been onboard. However, fresh reports claim that Russia has offered him and his family political asylum.
Putin Gives Refuge
According to initial reports, the aircraft first headed toward Syria's coastal area, a stronghold of Assad's Alawite sect, but then made a sudden U-turn and flew in the opposite direction for several minutes before vanishing from radar.
Two Syrian sources suggested there is a strong possibility that Assad may have been killed in a plane crash, as the unexpected U-turn and subsequent disappearance of the plane remain unexplained.
However, it has now been reported that Assad is not dead and has landed in Moscow with his family.
On Sunday, Syrian rebel forces entered Damascus without resistance, toppling Bashar al-Assad and bringing nearly six decades of his family's authoritarian rule to an abrupt end. The rapid advance marked a dramatic reversal in the 13-year civil war.
Assad's fall is one of the most significant shifts in the Middle East in decades, dismantling a regime that had served as a stronghold for Iran and Russia's influence in the region. Moscow has granted asylum to Assad and his family.
The unexpected collapse of Assad's government, driven by a Turkish-backed uprising rooted in Sunni Islamist factions, curtails Iran's ability to supply arms to its proxies and could jeopardize Russia's naval base in the Mediterranean.
Refugees in Turkey Hope New Beginning
It also opens the door for millions of refugees who have lived for over a decade in camps across Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan to return home. For Syrians, the sudden end of the long-frozen conflict brings hope of rebuilding after years of devastation.
The war left hundreds of thousands dead, reduced cities to rubble, shattered the economy under global sanctions, and offered little prospect of resolution until now.
"How many people were displaced across the world? How many people lived in tents? How many drowned in the seas?" the top rebel commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani told a huge crowd at the medieval Umayyad Mosque in central Damascus, referring to refugees who drowned trying to reach Europe.
"A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory," he said. It would take hard work to build a new Syria which he said would be "a beacon for the Islamic nation".
The Assad regime's oppressive police state—infamous since the 1960s under his father's rule as one of the most brutal in the Middle East, with hundreds of thousands detained in its prisons—dissolved overnight.
Confused but overjoyed, inmates streamed out of jails after rebels broke the locks on their cells. Families, reunited after years of separation, cried and celebrated with unrestrained emotion.
At sunrise, newly released prisoners were seen racing through the streets of Damascus, holding up their fingers to indicate the number of years they had spent in captivity.
