Deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow – reports
Reuters reports that ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is in Russia, according to a Kremlin source.
The Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed source as saying: “President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds.”
Russia has requested a closed-door UN security council meeting on Monday to discuss the UN peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights, according to diplomats.
Key events
Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the overthrowing of al-Assad in Syria is proof that Russia and its allies can be defeated.
“The events in Syria have made the world realise once again, or at least they should, that even the most cruel regime may fall and that Russia and its allies can be defeated,” Tusk said in a post on X.
Here’s how Syrians in cities across the world celebrated the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
People cheered, danced with flags and beeped car horns after the Syrian government was ousted in an end to the Assad family’s 50-year rule.
TASS, Russia’s state-owned news agency, said:
“Russian officials are in contact with representatives of the armed Syrian opposition, whose leaders have guaranteed the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic institutions on the territory of Syria.”
Here’s the full statement in Russian.
Deborah Cole
Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, just gave another statement before the cameras.
Most of it overlapped with the earlier written communique but this bit was new, NB: Germany has nearly one million Syrian nationals living on its soil, many of whom arrived during the 2015-16 refugee influx. It is the largest Syrian diaspora outside the Middle East:
“Today we stand by all Syrians who are full of hope for a free, just and safe Syria, whether they live in Syria itself or abroad. They have all followed the events over the last few days with the greatest suspense.
They fervently hope that there is now a chance to rebuild the country and embark on the long and difficult road to reconciliation. They wonder what will happen now. Because there are also radical and extremist forces among the resistance fighters.
What matters now is that Syria can quickly live in law and order — law and order must be established there; that all religious communities, all ethnic groups and minorities enjoy protection; that a life in dignity and self-determination must be made possible — that is how we will judge the next Syrian government.”
Deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow – reports
Reuters reports that ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is in Russia, according to a Kremlin source.
The Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed source as saying: “President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds.”
Russia has requested a closed-door UN security council meeting on Monday to discuss the UN peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights, according to diplomats.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad underscores Russia’s weakness and inability to fight on two fronts, Reuters reports.
Russia had strengthened Assad’s government by staging air strikes against opposition targets since 2015 and had operated out of two bases on Syrian territory.
But Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has sapped considerable military resources.
“Events in Syria demonstrate the weakness of Putin’s regime, which is incapable of fighting on two fronts and abandons its closest allies for the sake of continued aggression against Ukraine,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
UN chief hails end to ‘dictatorial regime’ in Syria
UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday praised the end of Syria’s “dictatorial regime” and called on the country to focus on rebuilding in the wake of President Bashar al-Assad’s sudden downfall.
“After 14 years of brutal war and the fall of the dictatorial regime, today the people of Syria can seize an historic opportunity to build a stable and peaceful future,” Guterres said in a statement.
“I reiterate my call for calm and avoiding violence at this sensitive time, while protecting the rights of all Syrians, without distinction.”
Peter Beaumont
Bashar al-Assad has fled Syria – but where is the former dictator now?
The fate and whereabouts of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad remained unclear on Sunday as his ally Russia, which had long sustained him in office, said he had resigned and departed the country.
“As a result of negotiations between B. Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. It added: “Russia did not participate in these negotiations.”
Assad had not been pictured since a meeting with the Iranian foreign minister in Damascus a week ago when he vowed to “crush” the rebels heading towards the city.
Islamist rebels declared they had ousted Assad after seizing control of the capital on Sunday, ending his family’s decades of autocratic rule after more than 13 years of civil war.
There were unconfirmed media reports that Assad had been visiting Moscow late last month when rebels reached Aleppo, before returning to Syria. The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter at the time and it is unclear whether Russia has offered him refuge now.
Amid questions over Assad’s whereabouts, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, Syria’s prime minister, told al-Arabia that he had not been able to speak with Assad since Saturday despite claims by state media on that day that Assad remained in Damascus in office.
Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, said on Sunday that he believed Assad was “probably outside of Syria”.
Attention had focused on a flight that left Damascus early on Sunday and disappeared from flight trackers outside Homs, but it was unclear who was on on board and whether it had landed.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, had reported that a plane believed to be carrying Assad “left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility.
Rami Abdul Rahman of SOHR said he had information that the plane was meant to take off at 10pm on Saturday. Although there appears to have been no flight at that time, a Syrian Air Ilyushin Il-76T cargo plane did take off from the airport hours later with the Flightradar24 tracking site showing that it first flew east from the capital then north-west and losing altitude near the central city of Homs where the flight transponder signal was lost.
Other reports focused on a flight to Sharjah in the UAE that departed a little earlier but a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president told reporters in Bahrain that he had no information that Assad was in the country.
Read the full analysis from senior international correspondent Peter Beaumont here:
From doctor to brutal dictator: the rise and fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad
Peter Beaumont
Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter for the Guardian.
On the face of it at least, the Bashar al-Assad of 2002 presented a starkly different figure to the brutal autocrat he would become, presiding over a fragile state founded on torture, imprisonment and industrial murder.
He had been president then for just two years, succeeding his father, Hafez, whose own name was a byword for brutality.
For a while the gawky former ophthalmologist, who had studied medicine in London and later married a British-Syrian wife, Asma, an investment banker at JP Morgan, was keen to show the world that Syria, under his leadership, could follow a different path.
Reaching out to the west, he pursued a public relations campaign to show the young Assad family as somehow ordinary despite the palaces and the ever visible apparatus of repression.
Visiting Damascus in that year ahead of Bashar’s state visit to the UK, arranged by then prime minister Tony Blair – the high point of that engagement – I was invited for a private coffee with Assad who sat on a white sofa in an expensively tailored suit.
Suggesting some uncertainty, he was curious about how Syria was seen in the world, floating possibilities for a change, including a reset in the relationship between Damascus and Israel.
It was a constructed iteration of the Assads – highlighting Asma’s much-vaunted “charitable” works and Bashar’s brief embrace by the west – that nodded to an ambition to transform Hafez’s Syria into something more like a version of Jordan’s paternalistic royal family. More manicured. Certainly more PR savvy. A dictatorship all the same.
In the midst of the conversation, however, Bashar proffered a chilling and almost throwaway line as he reflected on the previous year’s 9/11 attack on the US by al-Qaida and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan.
The world should know, Bashar insisted, that his father had been “right” all along in his brutal crushing of Islamist insurgents.
Read the full story here:
Saudi Arabia says it stands by Syrian people
Saudi Arabia says it is satisfied with the “positive steps” taken to guarantee the safety of the Syrian people and says it stands by the Syrian people and their choices at this “critical stage”, Reuters reports.
It called on the international community to stand by Syria without interfering in its internal affairs.
EU chief offers to help rebuild a Syria that protects minorities
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would help to rebuild a Syria that safeguards minorities after the dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad.
“Europe is ready to support safeguarding national unity and rebuilding a Syrian state that protects all minorities,” she said in a statement on X.
“The cruel Assad dictatorship has collapsed. This historic change in the region offers opportunities but is not without risks,” added the commission president.
Amnesty International called on Sunday for perpetrators of rights violations in Syria to face justice after Bashar al-Assad’s fall from power, calling it a “historic opportunity” to end decades of abuses.
“Suspected perpetrators of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations must be investigated, and if warranted, prosecuted for their crimes in fair trials,” Amnesty International head Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
Here’s how Syrians living in Turkey are reacting to the end of the Assad family’s 50 years of rule:
US president Joe Biden is expected to meet with his national security team on Sunday to receive an update on the situation in Syria, a White House spokesperson said in a post on X.
The US has about 900 troops in Syria, including US forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.
