Russia organised for Bashir al-Assad to flee to Moscow via its air base on the Syrian coast as rebels broke into Damascus on Sunday, Kremlin sources have said.
Three sources close to the Russian government told Bloomberg News that its agents persuaded the dictator he would lose a fight with the rebels and that he needed to flee the country immediately.
Assad followed the advice and reportedly fled Damascus without telling his closest advisers and friends in case he was betrayed.
Once his private jet had taken off from the capital, its transponder was switched off and the aircraft flew to Russia’s Khmeimim air base on the Syrian coast.
There, Assad headed to Moscow, possibly after transferring to a Russian military plane.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, personally approved the rescue of Assad on Sunday and has guaranteed his safety in exile, although he has no intention of meeting him, Kremlin sources said.
Vladimir Putin, pictured embracing Assad in November 2017, reportedly has no intention of meeting with him in Russia – Mikhail Klimentyev/Pool Sputnik Kremlin
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, confirmed that Assad and his family were now in Russia and would not be handed over to the International Criminal Court, which has accused him of murdering thousands of his opponents.
He said: “He is safe. This shows that Russia is acting as required in such extraordinary situations.”
Assad had been a vital Kremlin ally in the Middle East and the collapse of his regime is said to have humiliated and angered Putin.
The Russian president is also said to be furious that his intelligence agents in Syria did not predict the speed and scale of the rebel advance on Damascus.
The reputation of Moscow’s once-vaunted intelligence services had already taken a blow with its mistaken analysis that Putin would be welcomed as a “conquering hero” in Ukraine after his invasion in 2022.
Putin has not directly commented on the collapse of the Assad regime but on Wednesday he held a telephone conversation with ally Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, in which he discussed the “tense situation” in the Middle East.
Russia is now scrambling to open up communication channels with the new rebel authorities in Syria in an attempt to protect its Khmeimim air base and Tartus naval base.
As well as projecting force into Syria and the Middle East, both military sites act as vital staging posts for Russia’s operations in Africa, where the Kremlin has supported coups against pro-Western governments.
Children wave Syrian opposition flags as people in Damascus celebrate the fall of the Assad regime – OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP
Syrians pull down a statue of Hafez al-Assad, the father of deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus on Monday – Murat Sengul/Anadolu via Getty Images
Putin intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 by carpet bombing rebel fighters, essentially turning the Assad regime into a client state along with Iran.
Kremlin propagandists and news agencies have been framing the defeat of Assad as a terrifying victory for Jihadists in the Middle East, despite Russia’s best efforts.
Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said Russia had dealt “with terrorists to stabilise the situation that had threatened the entire region”.
Over the past few weeks, Russia initially bombed columns of rebel fighters as they advanced rapidly towards Damascus. However, after watching Assad’s army collapse, the Kremlin quickly concluded that the regime could not be saved.
Instead, Moscow shifted its focus to rescuing Assad and his family, while also moving to protect its military bases.
By helping Assad flee, Putin feels that he has saved face and protected his client state, an important pillar of his international alliance-building, it is believed.
‘Secret compromise’
Alexander Kokcharov, a geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics, said the Kremlin needed to save Assad to reassure its other dictator clients that Moscow could be relied upon in times of crisis.
He said: “They will know that if they are threatened with an overthrow in their native country, they can still live comfortably in Putin’s Russia. This is part of the Kremlin’s offering to its geopolitical allies.”
According to Sergey Markov, a pro-Kremlin commentator on Telegram, Moscow’s rescue of Assad proved that its government had already been successfully negotiating with the Syrian rebels.
He said: “Russia helped the new Syrian government take Damascus without a fight. To do this, they reached a secret compromise with Assad that he would not give the order to defend the capital in exchange for the safety of Assad and his family members.”
Iran has also been attempting to avoid humiliation since the sudden collapse of its proxy state, which had been a key land bridge to its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.
The Telegraph revealed this week that senior commanders of Iran’s Republican Guards had been blaming each other for failing to prop up the Assad regime.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Iranian officials had been warning the dictator since September that a major rebel attack was planned.
He added: “No one should doubt that what has taken place in Syria is the product of a joint US-Israeli plot.”
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