Bashar al Assad in Moscow a year after his overthrow?” data-eio=”l”/>A year ago, Bashar al Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for 20 years after three decades of oppressive rule by his father Hafez, He did not wait for dawn to flee his home in Damascus. His new home would be, from December 8, 2024, in exile in Moscow, surrounded by great secrecy.
Surveillance 24 hours a day, the lives of Al Assad and his family are protected. The official Russian media does not report on how the deposed Syrian president spends his days, but they reproduce some speculation from the foreign press on this matter.
“We cannot share any information on that matter,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on December 1, when asked about the details of Assad’s life in Russia over the past year.
Luxury in Moscow… and video games
Bashar al Assad and his family They used to spend time in the Russian capital while he was in power in Syria, supported by authorities who were his main allies.
It was Moscow that gave him passage through the Russian base of Jameimim, in the Syrian Mediterranean province of Latakia, to that they could escape an offensive led by the Levant Liberation Organization and its leader Ahmed al Sharaa, who has held power in the Arab country since then.
The German newspaper The time revealed that Al Assad, 60 years old, and his family They live in apartments in the luxurious Moscow City complex. There he spends time “playing video games” and visiting the shopping center in the same territory.
And not only that, but I would enjoy a country house in the Moscow region, heavily protected by a private security company.
But during this year rumors about his daily life have surfaced. Two months ago the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights assured that was poisoned in Moscow, something denied by the Russian authorities.
“We provided asylum to Bashar al Assad and his family for purely humanitarian reasons. He has no problems with his stay in our capital. He has not suffered poisoning. If these rumors arise, they remain on the conscience of those who spread them,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
What it does seem is that his power and influence have already been reduced to zero. Furthermore, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, received Al Sharaa for the first time in October, with whom he spoke about bilateral relations for two and a half hours, according to official sources.
Some information says that Al Sharaa would have asked Putin to hand over Al Assad to Damascus, a point that was not confirmed by any official source.
And your family?
It was in February when a short vertical video of Hafez Bashar al Assad, the former president’s eldest son and who was seen as his successor, came to light on his X account – suspended shortly after – and his Telegram channel.
The graduate in Mathematics from Moscow State University said that his family had “no plan, not even a plan B, to get out of Damascus, much less Syria,” where he had returned from Russia on December 1st to be with his father and brother Karim.
In what was the first public appearance of a member of the family clan after the overthrow, the young Al Assad explained that, however, They had to flee from Damascus international airport on a Russian military plane to reach Khameimimfrom where they left for Russia.
Bashar’s wife, Asma al Assad, a British citizen although her passport has expired, was receiving medical treatment in Moscow. The health situation of the former president’s wife is believed to be critical, after she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024, after breast cancer from which she recovered in 2019.
The rest of his family still shows up from time to time. His cousin, the controversial Rami Makhlouf, announced the formation of a militia in the context of the sectarian violence against the Alawite minority – a branch of Shiite Islam professed by the Al Assad family – unleashed in March in the coastal area of Syria, about which there has been no further news either.
Part of Al Assad’s family circle and close friends are hiding between the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon, although some of them have been detained, especially those who stayed in Syria.
