Russia Grants Asylum to Ex-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Confirms Kremlin

Bashar al-Assad asylum in Russia

Russia Grants Asylum to Ex-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: According to AP, Russia Monday granted political asylum to the former Syrian president who went in exile Bashar al Assad.

Putin's decision to grant political asylum to exiled Bashar al Assad was confirmed at a press briefing by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Sunday was the day that Assad traveled out of Syria and fled from the regime now recently fallen.

Peskov would not elaborate on the specifics about Assad's location. He would not say whether Putin had any plans to meet with Assad.

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It was the first time such an operation by rebel forces had materialized inside the regime in over 4 years. Over 11 days passed since the attack, and 12 years since his crackdown on popular protests that sparked off civil war, the biggest part of which, however, had remained inactive during most of the time due to a rebel push.

"Which victory, for all of my brothers, is historical in terms of the region?" Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that led the offensive, said Sunday at the famous Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

In celebration, the streets erupted as the rebels made it to the capital, ending a 50-year hegemony of the Assad family.

Residents cheered in the streets as the rebel factions heralded the departure of "tyrant" Assad, saying: "We declare the city of Damascus free."

Celebratory gunfire sounded along with shouts of, “Syria is ours and not the Assad family's”, AFP reported.

Dozens of men, women and children wandered through Assad's modern, spacious home whose rooms had been stripped bare.

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"I can't believe I'm living this moment," tearful Damascus resident Amer Batha told AFP by phone.

"We've been waiting a long time for this day," he said.

The rebel factions on Telegram declared that ''50 years, with the Baathist Aasiyah rule, were terminated, and 13 years of crimes, tyranny, and displacement.''

Throughout the country, statues of Hafez al-Assad - father of Bashar al-Assad and founder of the government inherited by him - were brought down.

On their advance, rebels proclaimed that they liberated prisoners, including those released on Sunday at the Sednaya facility, now notorious for the darkest abuses of the Assad era.

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