Closing summary
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad said on Monday he was evacuated to Russia from the Hmeimim base in Syria on the evening of 8 December as it came under drone attacks, after leaving Damascus that morning with opposition fighters closing in. The comment, in a statement that was published on the Syrian presidency’s Telegram channel and dated 16 December from Moscow, was Assad’s first in public since he was toppled more than a week ago by a rebel offensive.
Assad also said in a statement on his Facebook page that he had planned to keep fighting but the Russians evacuated him. He said that “at no time during the events that have taken place in Syria” had he considered leaving the country, according to the TASS news agency.
US president-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that Turkey will hold the key to what happens in Syria, where rebels toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad earlier this month. Turkey, a Nato member, backed the rebels whose assumption of power in Damascus ended Syria’s 13-year civil war.
In Damascus, residents dismissed Assad’s comments and some told the Associated Press that he had abandoned Syria’s people long ago. “Is he going to run away from us? He still won’t be able to run away from God,” said one resident, Moataz al-Ahmed, as children stepped on a fallen statue of Assad’s father, Hafez, who had begun the family’s half-century rule.
British officials will meet Syria’s interim authorities for talks in Damascus this week, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday. “I can confirm today that we have sent a delegation of senior UK officials to Damascus this week for meetings with the new interim Syrian authorities and members of civil society groups in Syria,” Lammy told a press conference.
The head of Russia’s Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, on Monday suggested removing Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from Russia’s list of “terrorist organisations.” Kadyrov made the suggestion on his official Telegram channel and said Russia and Syria should organise contact groups once the designation was removed to establish bilateral ties.
Extremism, Russia and Iran should not have a place in Syria’s future, EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Monday after meeting with European foreign ministers. “Many foreign ministers emphasised that it should be a condition for the new leadership to eliminate Russian influence (in Syria),” Kallas said. Four Syrian official told Reuters on Saturday that while Russia is pulling back its military from the frontlines in northern Syria and from posts in the Alawite Mountains, Moscow is not leaving its two main bases in the country after the fall of president Bashar al-Assad.
The vault of Syria’s central bank holds nearly 26 tonnes of gold, the same amount it had at the start of its bloody civil war in 2011, even after the chaotic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s despotic regime, four people familiar with the situation told Reuters. But the country has only a small amount of foreign currency reserves in cash, the same people said. Syria’s gold reserves stood at 25.8 tonnes in June 2011, according to the World Gold Council, which cites the Central Bank of Syria as its data source. That is worth $2.2bn at current market prices, according to Reuters calculations.
The Israeli ambassador to Ireland said closing its embassy in Dublin was “the correct diplomatic decision”, and claimed there was “a hostile atmosphere” in the country. The Israeli government announced the closure in a statement on Sunday, saying it was because of the “extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government”, and accusing Ireland of “crossing every red line”. Ambassador Dana Erlich accused Ireland of taking a more “extreme stance” than any other country.
European Union nations on Monday set out conditions for lifting sanctions on Syria and kickstarting aid to the conflict-ravaged country amid uncertainty about its new leaders’ intentions just over a week after they seized power, AP reports. At a meeting in Brussels, the EU’s top diplomats said they want guarantees from members of Syria’s interim government that they are preparing for a peaceful political future involving all minority groups, one in which extremism and former allies Russia and Iran have no place.
Foreign ministers from the United States, UK, France, Germany and Italy will hold talks on Tuesday to discuss developments in Syria, Italy’s Antonio Tajani said. “We hope that the first positive signals will transform into concrete positive signals,” foreign minister Tajani said at a conference of diplomats at the Italian foreign ministry. The virtual meeting comes amid Western moves towards the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group that is in charge following the ousting of president Bashar al-Assad.
The United Nations envoy to Syria has told Islamist militants who toppled Bashar al-Assad that they need to oversee a “credible and inclusive” transition, as world powers sought to engage with the country’s new rulers. Geir Pedersen, a Norwegian diplomat, met the Syrian rebel leader. Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, in Damascus on Monday. He also met the interim prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir.
An uncle of the recently ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used an adviser in Guernsey to secretly manage his wealth, which included a vast European property empire worth hundreds of millions of euros that prosecutors claim was acquired with funds looted from the wartorn state. Rifaat al-Assad, known as the “Butcher of Hama” for overseeing the violent suppression of a rebellion in the 1980s, has been accused of war crimes by Swiss prosecutors. In 2020, he was convicted by a French court of embezzling Syrian state funds and pouring the money into luxury properties, with the French state seizing assets worth €90m.
A team of Turkish rescuers began an in-depth search of Syria’s infamous Sednaya prison on Monday, a spokesperson for Turkey’s AFAD disaster management agency told AFP. Located just north of Damascus, the prison known locally as locally known as “the human slaughterhouse”, has become a symbol of the rights abuses of the Assad regime, especially since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011. Prisoners held inside the complex were freed early last week by the rebels who ousted Bashar al-Assad on 8 December.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and the Middle East live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Standing at the gates of the Khmeimim airbase, a fighter from the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) eyed a pink vape being puffed on by a Russian soldier. Catching his gaze, the soldier offered it to him. The bearded fighter took a drag and shrugged, giving a thumbs up to the Russian soldier, who let him keep it.
Just over a week ago, Russian jets taking off from Khmeimim airbase were heading to northern Syria to drop bombs on rebel groups. This week, Russians are negotiating with the same factions, now in control of the country after their 12-day lightning offensive that toppled the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
“We don’t feel unsafe, we are hoping to make friendly relations with the new government as soon as it becomes a legitimate government,” said a representative of the Russian military, who allowed the Guardian rare access to the Khmeimim airbase on Sunday. The representative said communications with HTS started a week ago to coordinate military affairs between Russian forces in Syria and the country’s new leaders.
“Neither side is making provocations and things have been fine,” the Russian military representative said, as he gestured to boxes of humanitarian aid and Russian ministry of defence-branded backpacks, which they said were a gift from Russia to the Syrian people.
HTS fighters guarded the gates of the airbase as Russian Mig fighter jets took off. “We used to be scared whenever we would hear the sound of a Russian jet – now it’s become normal,” Abu Khalil, a 26-year-old HTS fighter guarding the airbase said. Outside, Russian soldiers still milled about the town of Khmeimim, shopping at stores whose signs were written in Cyrillic.
