Syria crisis: Ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Russia after the rebels captured Damascus. They have been granted asylum by the Russian authorities, Russian news agencies report, citing a Kremlin source.
“President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds,” an unnamed source was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Syria rebel fighters raced into Damascus unopposed, overthrowing Assad and ending nearly six decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule after a lightning advance that reversed the course of a 13-year civil war. This marks the end of 24-year regime of Assad and the 50-year rule of his family in Syria.
In one of the most consequential turning points in the Middle East for generations, the fall of Assad’s government wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Moscow gave him and his family asylum.
