The story of how deposed Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad escaped from Syria first via private jet and then via Russian military transport is eye-opening not only for the stealth manner in which it was done, but for what…and who…was left behind.
Assad Escapes Syria Using Decoys, Private Jet, And Russian Military
It was widely reported on December 7, 2024 that a Syrian Air Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane had gone down over Homs, based on transponder data obtained by FlightRadar24. Hours later, news reports began to circulate that Assad was onboard and died in the accident.
Turns out there probably was no crash and Assad was not on the Soviet-era, Russian-made cargo jet. Instead, it was a decoy with the transponder manipulated. Think about it, the most wanted man in Syria boarding a Syrian Air jet with the transponder on? That’s doubtful.
Instead, it appears that Assad met with his military leaders and cabinets, urged them to fight, and promised that reinforcements were coming, but then, under cover of darkness, boarded his private jet and flew to Russia’s Tartus Naval Base on the Mediterranean Sea in northwest Syria (Assad owns an Embraer Legacy 600, restiration code C5-SKY). From there, he was transported to Russia via a Russian military jet.
His wife Asama and children were already waiting in Moscow, where the entire family had been granted political asylum, but Assad never let his brother know…he had to escape himself via Iraq. He never let his maternal cousins know. They were gunned down while trying to escape via the Lebanese border.
When Assad’s opulent residence was raided by rebel forces, there was still food on the stove and family photographs left behind…he had clearly left in haste after Russia guaranteed him safe passage and warned him that he had very little time left to evacuate as rebels rapidly approached Damasus.
Talk about deception.
Assad is in Russia now–at an undisclosed location–and will now live out his days in exile (although I do recommend he avoid upper-floor windows or domestic flights).
His escape from Syria involved his private jet, a vintage Syrian Air IL-76 as a decoy, and Russian military aircraft. Quite a feat, indeed…
> Read More: “Accidental” Plane Crash Apparently Kills Yevgeny Prigozhin
Finally, let me say (as I said yesterday) that Assad was no saint…but sometimes the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know. Assad appeared to be a run-of-the-mill charlatan, who enriched himself at the expense of his people, ruled through fear and graft, and proved a puppet of greater powers like Iran and Russia, who spit him out when they no longer found him useful. As much as it is fun to wonder whether Syrian Air will start operating to Europe again, the power vacuum that now exists makes Syria one of the most volatile places on Earth.
The Middle-East is all about Tribes .
And the US is their hired mercenaries to settle their tribal disputes.
USA is the modern day Christopher Columbus. Slay anyone to spread our gospel of democracy.
“powers like Iran and Russia, who spit him out when they no longer found him useful.”
Not quite how it happened. If they no longer found him useful, he wouldn’t have ended up in Russia…the ISIS forces backed by Israel and Turkey (and lord knows who else) caught them off guard.
You are 100% correct Aaron, and yes, I can say that when you are.
@Aaron: You reduce it to ISIS…it’s not that simple. And I quite agree that Turkey and Israel helped make this revolution possible…but Russia and Iran could have helped and chose not to this time. Yes, they were overextended…but had they really found Assad useful, Putin could have sent the Air Force to capret bomb the rebels, just like it has throughout the civil war.
I’m not enthusiastic about the new Syrian government but don’t reduce it to ISIS (at least not yet).
ISIS is pretty much a lumping of the main rebel forces, whatever their names are. Similar ideologies (and not just religious, but one with a Sunni-Muslim at the top of the food chain ideology).
Also, it wasn’t just carpet bombing via Russia and Iran that won tilted the war to Assad’s favor, but Hizbollah as well, which Israel has also caused to overextend itself (and that’s being generous, Israel also neutralized them more or less from being a factor in Syria).
Syria is already being carved up by Israel (with some Israelis already celebrating the skiing they will do there) and Turkey. And if Syria goes the Yugoslavia route, it could get even worse.
The Israelis already has an illegal ski lift set up — and perhaps even operating — on Syrian territory before this fall. Now in Syria they have also grabbed the highest or second highest peak in all of the area and will set up a forward recon facility that they will never want to give up.
It’s primarily the Ukrainians who delivered the conditions for Assad’s defeat. Secondarily, it was the Israelis who delivered the conditions for Assad’s defeat. But at root, brutal dictatorships are self-defeating and having the same kind of allies doesn’t change that.
The Russians are evacuating from their coastal province bases in Syria, but it could be part of the deal Putin has with Erdogan.
Typical dictator….take the money and run!!
How about the billions of dollars stashed away in foreign banks?!?
Putin may extract a hefty “safe harbor” fee while Syria attempts to claw back some of that money as well.
Messy situation.
MAGA Lord Trump’s Emperor Putin already collected from Assad, but Putin was paid in kind without Assad having to transfer much in the way of assets to Putin and Putin’s fronts.
Putin is willfully playing host to this rogue Assad because he wants to encourage other rogues to operate on his behalf and facilitate his cross-border aspirations for Russian power projection. So to keep the game going, playing host of last refuge for the rogues is part and parcel of doing business.
The Assad family should quietly move back to the UK where Mrs. Assad and the kids remain citizens, and Bashar can resume his practice as an opthalmologist.
Wouldn’t the ICC be interested in getting its hands on them?
I would hope so.
The US has even put sanctions on Asma’s father, a London doctor, forcing the British subject (citizen) to move to Russia.
Assad was not a money flaunting dictator. He was a brutal dictator who amassed billions by having control of companies but his children went to ordinary schools, he lived in a modest house, not the palace. Israel felt they could deal with him but don’t know about HTS and others, hence their Pearl Harbor type bombing of 400+ military sites. They destroyed the entire Syrian naval fleet. Netanyahu is brutal, too, in a way, similar to Imperial Japan of the early 1940’s.
The children eventually will. The UK already is home to the dirty wealth of the regime of the last Iranian shah and various other former royal families that supported brutality against domestic opposition, Their next generations and extended family members live on the spoils to this day. [I have seen much the same go on in the US.]
Do you guys really think any revolution can happen without the approval of the West, particularly the US these days?
Depends on whether you consider Turkey to be part of the west. Ankara bankrolled and trained the rebels. I personally don’t see the Turkish government as being very pro-western right now given the western values of secularism, Kurdish rights, free press, etc.
Yes, revolution can happen without US approval. Look at South Korea impeaching their president after he declared martial law. No US approval.
Iraq internal war 2013-2017. Not what the US wanted.
Hamas takeover of Gaza 2007. Not what the US wanted.
Darfur / Sudan. Not what the US wanted.
The US can want all it wants but many things America cannot have.
Only Putin thinks the US gets what it wants. …and Ken. Unless Ken is also Putin.
A bloodthirsty dictator who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his own people, including using WMD’s on them flees in terror when justice approaches? Inconceivable!
As to the devil you know versus the devil you don’t, you might feel differently if one of your kids got hooked on Assad’s drugs that kept his regime afloat.
This so much reminds me of the Baby Doc Duvalier and his wife Micheline making their escape in early 1986 from Port Au Prince to the French Riviera in a U.S. supplied military transport.
Assad was “no saint”? You seem rather casual about this bloody dictator. https://radaronline.com/p/inside-assad-human-slaughterhouse-torture-chambers-prisoners-deprived/
Love the blog. You’re at your best when you write about aviation.
It’s nice to see you recognize Assad was the least worse option for Syria. He generally protected Christian minorities and women weren’t forced to wear hoods.
I don’t see why the word charlatan was used to describe Assad. He was forced into the position because his brother died and his father picked him as a successor. He presided over the best possible situation where an Alawite minority kept the islamists and jihadists at bay. Syria was a safe and prosperous country until the CIA backed revolution in 2011. Charlatan best applies to people like Keir Starmer who talk about protecting freedom of the press worldwide but criminalize journalists and citizen journalists at home for reporting or tweeting about Muslim rape gangs. Assad never pretended to be anything he wasn’t.
Assad kept Syria intact. Now Israel has invaded and occupied a portion of Syria. They were the ones who orchestrated the rebel takeover because the rebel leadership doesn’t say one word about Israel invading Syria and sings their praises. Isn’t it funny that ISIS or Al Q never attacked Israel. guess who funds them: Israel.
Reading David Arnett makes Assad sound like a great head of state. No, he was brutal in mass arrests, torture, and killing those detained. He tried to develop nuclear weapons but his reactor was flattened by Israel.
Some of the senior Turkish-supported opponents to the Assad regime have been Syrian Christians. A Christian Syrian acquaintance of mine with relatives scattered from Stockholm to Chicago — and various places in between and elsewhere — lost an uncle because Assad wanted him assassinated for opposition to the Assad regime and showing the Syrian opposition to Assad included religious minorities too.
While the Turks seem to have the upper hand in Syria for now, in large part due to Turkish support for HTS, FSA and some other groups, it’s to be seen what comes from the Israelis having played up support for Kurds and also for some non-Kurdish anti-Assad elements in southern and eastern Syria. Turkey will do what it can to try to suppress Kurdish aspirations for autonomy and a recognized sovereign state of the Kurds’ own. Israel will continue to be Israel in stirring the pot. Iran will still find supporters in the mess (like it did even in Libya of all places). This is not a recipe for peace and stability given the very real potential for Syria to continue to be a proxy war battlefield and a sort of successor to Lebanon in that regard. But at the same time. the Syrians have good cause to celebrate the end of Assad. And hopefully the retreat of two of the proxy war actors provides a window for the other proxy war actors to make a deal to let Syria not be a Libya or Sudan.