Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Russia and have been granted asylum by the Russian authorities, Russian news agencies has reported on Sunday, citing 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.”
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad underscores Russia’s weakness and inability to fight on two fronts, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Sunday.
Russia had bolstered Assad’s government by staging air strikes against opposition targets beginning in 2015 and had operated out of two bases on Syrian territory.
But Moscow’s 33-month-old 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.