Claim: The first image of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Russia has emerged, who fled after rebels took over Damascus.
Fact: While the Kremlin has confirmed Assad’s arrival in Russia, the image is unrelated. The image shows Assad and his wife visiting Aleppo in February 2023, after a deadly earthquake hit Turkey and its bordering Syrian areas.
On 9 December, an X user posted a picture (archive) claiming that it shows Assad and his wife in Russia after they fled Syria. The caption reads, “The first photo of Bashar al-Assad after his escape to Moscow.”
A ticker of a news channel at the bottom of the image states: “NEWS Russian state media: Bashar al Assad is in Moscow.”
Rebels take the Syrian capital
Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime ended after rebels from northern Syria, led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), captured several cities in early December, including the capital city of Damascus.
The Assad family ruled Syria for five decades. Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar al-Assad, ruled the country from 1971 to 2000. His son then ruled till he was ousted by the rebel groups in December 2024, for a period that included him crushing the “peaceful pro-democracy uprising” in 2011. Syria then spiraled into a civil war that would kill “half a million people.”
The insurgent group HTS previously had links to Al-Qaeda, which it later renounced. While the group has presented itself as more tolerant towards religious and ethnic minorities, “many Syrians remain suspicious,” according to the Associated Press.
Amid the Damascus takeover, reports emerged that Assad and his family had fled to Russia. The Kremlin then confirmed to news outlets that Assad arrived in Russia.
A staunch ally of Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war, Russia offered asylum to the ousted leader.
On 16 December, Assad released a statement published on the Syrian presidency’s Telegram channel which is yet to be verified. The statement says he was visiting a “Russian military base in Latakia province ‘to oversee combat operations’ only to see that Syrian troops had abandoned positions,” after the rebels were taking over. The base came under drone attacks, it was then that an immediate evacuation of Assad to Russia was arranged, according to reports citing the statement.
Fact or Fiction?
When the photo in the claim went viral around the time of Damascus’ fall, Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist at BBC Verify wrote (archive) on X that the image is actually from “February 2023 and shows Assad visiting victims of the Turkey-Syria earthquake in Aleppo.”
The second image in his post is a screengrab of a YouTube video shared on 10 February 2023 by Syria Stream, titled “[translated from Arabic to English] Summary of Bashar al-Assad’s visit to those affected by the earthquake in Aleppo!” It shows the now toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visiting the earthquake-stricken areas. From timestamp 0:09 to 0:12, moments from this video match the image from the claim, and confirm that the photo does not show his recent arrival in Russia.
An earthquake of 7.8-magnitude hit areas in Turkey, and jolted Aleppo, a Syrian city that shares a northern border with Turkish provinces, in February 2023. The deadly quake killed around 50,000 people, in both Turkey and Syria.
A further keyword search yielded a news report about Assad and his wife visiting earthquake survivors at a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, published by the UAE-based news outlet Gulf News on 10 February 2023. Titled “Syria’s Assad visits quake victims in Aleppo,” the article carries an image of Assad and his wife, credited to Reuters, wearing clothes similar to the ones in the photo from the claim. According to the caption, the image shows “Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and his wife Asma visit[ing] an elderly man who survived the earthquake, at Aleppo university hospital, Syria, on February 10, 2023.” This further confirmed that the image is from their visit to Aleppo in 2023 and is entirely unrelated to Assad’s recent escape to Russia.
Virality
The X post garnered 41,500 views.
It appeared on X here, here, here, here, here.
On Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
Cedar News published the image here.
Conclusion: The image is not recent and does not show Assad and his wife in Russia. It shows them visiting Aleppo in February 2023, after a deadly earthquake hit Turkey and its bordering Syrian areas.
Background image in cover photo: China Global South Project
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