Bashar al-Assad’s family fled to Russia in the days after rebel forces launched a shock offensive that captured swathes of territory across northern Syria, it has been revealed.
It comes after a source close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg News that Moscow had no plans to rescue the Syrian president, with Vladimir Putin said to be disgusted by reports of regime troops fleeing their positions.
“Russia doesn’t have a plan to save Assad and doesn’t see one emerging as long as the Syrian president’s army continues to abandon its positions,” said the source.
Asma al-Assad, the Syrian president’s British-born wife, fled with their three children last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing Syrian security officials and Arab officials.
Assad’s two brothers-in-law have also left Syria and travelled to the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper said.
It is unclear whether the Syrian president has remained in his country.
A pro-Assad TV news channel said on Friday that he had travelled to Iran, but later denied its own report.
Egyptian and Jordanian officials are understood to have urged the Syrian president to leave the country and form a government-in-exile.
The jihadist-led rebel forces captured Hama on Thursday night after seizing Syria’s second city, Aleppo, last week. On Friday, they were advancing on the city of Homs, which lies on the road to Damascus.
The US and Russia both told its citizens to leave Syria on the next available commercial flight.
On Friday night the US Department of State told Americans to leave from Damascus or “be prepared to shelter in place for extended periods”.
Charles Lister, the director of the Syria programme at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said Assad had relied on Putin to save him in 2015 but his future now looked bleak, adding: “Russia doesn’t seem able, or perhaps even willing, to save him.”
Iran has a military presence in Homs and other parts of Syria, and on Friday Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said he would support Assad “to the extent necessary”, without elaborating.
But Iran may have been weakened by direct and indirect clashes with US-backed Israel, and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon have been degraded by a major Israeli offensive.
The lightning-fast rebel strike has not only strained relations between Russia and Syria but has also made the Kremlin nervous about the safety of its military bases.
Fighterbomber, a prominent aviation military blogging channel, has warned that the Kremlin will struggle to evacuate its main air base before rebels attack and capture it.
It issued the warning after Jihadist rebels captured the city of Hama on Thursday evening, opening up a clear route to the Khmeimim air base, 75 miles west near the Mediterranean.
“It is almost impossible to evacuate the base. In the best case, it is possible to evacuate most of the personnel, documentation and ferry serviceable aircraft,” it said. “All other property will remain at the bases.”
It appears that the rebel strike that has routed Syrian government forces across the country over the past week was never considered feasible, and emergency evacuation plans were not drawn up.
According to Fighterbomber there are only two reserve airfields in Syria, which he described as a “critical minimum”. This means that instead of flying aircraft off vulnerable airstrips, they need to be driven to the Russian naval base of Tartus, 50 miles away, and then loaded onto transport ships.
Alexander Kots, another influential Russian military blogger, said Russian jets could not do much to halt the advance of the rebels without support on the ground from the Syrian army, adding:“The Syrian army is not yet showing any particular readiness to fight for its country.”
There is also the threat of rebel drone strikes on Russian bases in Syria. When Putin ordered his forces to intervene in the Syrian civil war in 2015, drones were not a feature, but the war in Ukraine has turbo-charged their use on the battlefield.
“The Khmeimim airfield is not a multi-story industrial facility with basements, it is a field with easily-assembled houses on top, which will cease to function as soon as the enemy either approaches the range of artillery fire, or the range of drones,” said Fighterbomber.
Putin intervened in the civil war in Syria in a carefully-calculated move designed to give the Kremlin an easy foreign military win and to project force.
Part of the plan was to set up a string of military bases that could be used to irritate the West. The two most important are the airbase at Khmeimim and the naval base at Tartus, 50 miles south. Reports said Russian naval ships have already been seen leaving Tartus, although Western officials do not believe it has been abandoned.
Last week rebels captured Aleppo and overran a couple of nearby smaller Russian bases. Putin promptly sacked the main Russian commander in Syria and ordered his air force to intensify their attacks on rebels, but Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said the move did not appear to have worked.
She explained that defending its bases, vital for Putin’s North Africa and Middle East ambitions, would be a priority for the Kremlin, adding: “Watch for signs that mercenaries are redeploying to Syria. By now, Russia probably has made its assessments and is executing plans.”
Putin has pledged to his Iranian allies that he will support Assad but analysts have said he will be frustrated with the renewed fighting in Syria because it will distract him from his war in Ukraine, which is a priority project.
Rebels advance in Syria’s strategically important province of Homs on Friday – Izettin Kasim/Anadolu via Getty Images
Russian military bloggers with strong links to Russian forces have also started to question the quality and commitment of the Syrian army.
Rybar, a Russian military blogger, said rebel forces were still advancing rapidly and that Syrian military claims of a counterattack were lies. “There are no sensible reports of battles or any resistance from the Syrian troops at all,” Rybar said, adding that an attack on Damascus was anticipated within the next few days.
“The pace at which the militants are moving from the north suggests that Homs will not last long. Next they will likely target Damascus,“ said the blogger.
