The former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has said he had no plans to flee Syria before being evacuated by the Russian army after its base in western Syria came under attack.
In his first comments since the fall of his brutal regime, Assad said he had planned to keep fighting rebel forces.
“At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party. The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught,” he said in a statement published on the Telegram channel belonging to the Syrian presidency and dated 16 December.
In the statement, Assad said he left Damascus on 8 December as opposition fighters closed in, moving to the Russian-controlled Khmeimim airbase in his stronghold in the Latakia province “to oversee combat operations”.
“Upon arrival at the airbase that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen,” he added.
Assad claimed he was evacuated to Russia after the airbase had “itself come under intensified attack by drone strikes”.
“With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December,” the statement said.
Assad appeared to dismiss media reports alleging that his aides and relatives were misled and kept unaware of his plans to flee to Moscow. “First, my departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed,” he said.
In his statement, Assad also sought to dismiss the widespread reports and footage documenting his family’s vast corruption, which has come to light in greater detail since he fled Syria.
“I reaffirm that the person who, from the very first day of the war, refused to barter the salvation of his nation for personal gain, or to compromise his people in exchange for numerous offers and enticements is the same person who stood alongside the officers and soldiers of the army on the front lines, just metres from terrorists in the most dangerous and intense battlefields,” he said.
Assad’s exact whereabouts in Russia remain uncertain, and he has yet to be photographed in the country. His family has longstanding ties with Moscow, with relatives having transferred millions of dollars into Russia over the years.
Vladimir Putin has yet to comment on the fall of his close ally, with the fate of the two key Russian military bases in Syria unclear.
Video footage over the weekend showed a column of nearly 100 military vehicles leaving the Damascus area including armoured vehicles. However, it remains unclear whether this represents a full or partial evacuation.
“There are no final decisions on this,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Monday. “We are in contact with representatives of the forces that now control the situation in the country.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations envoy to Syria was visiting Damascus on Monday, where he told the Islamist militants who toppled Assad that they need to oversee a “credible and inclusive” transition.
Geir Pedersen, a Norwegian diplomat, met the Syrian rebel leader. Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and the interim prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir.
A statement released by Pedersen’s office said the envoy had offered UN support and stressed “the need for a credible and inclusive Syrian-owned and led political transition”.
Diplomats have been scrambling for influence over whatever government replaces the Assad regime.
The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she had instructed the bloc’s top diplomat for Syria to go to Damascus on Monday to make contact with the new government.
Iran and Russia, which backed Assad in Syria’s bloody 13-year civil war, will have lost leverage while Turkey and some Gulf states will be seeking to build on their active support for anti-Assad rebels. Western countries largely backed the opposition early in the civil war but dithered as Islamist groups, such as the now dominant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), became prominent.
Neighbouring Israel has also sought to exploit the power vacuum to weaken any future Syrian administration, conducting hundreds of strikes on strategic weapons and equipment stockpiles. Israeli troops have seized land on the frontier.
On Monday, a UK-based Syria monitor claimed Israeli airstrikes hit missile warehouses in what it said were the “most violent strikes in the Syrian coast region” in more than a decade.
Sharaa has said he is not interested in conflict with Israel. “There are no excuses for any foreign intervention in Syria now after the Iranians have left. We are not in the process of engaging in a conflict with Israel,” he told Syrian state media.
Pedersen flew to Damascus directly after an international meeting in Aqaba, Jordan, where top diplomats from the Arab states, the US, Turkey, France, Germany and the UK met on Saturday to agree on what they said would be a “more hopeful, secure and peaceful future” for Syrians.
The statement from the envoy’s office on Monday said the “transitional political process” must “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government”.
Syria’s new rulers have sought to reassure the country’s minorities they will be protected and included. Still, there are concerns that the interim administration run by HTS, which is composed largely of fighters from Syria’s Sunni majority, may sideline large minority populations, which include Shia Muslims, Druze, Alawites and Christians.
To help Syria’s economy, Pedersen has called for the US, UK and EU to end sanctions imposed on the country when Assad was in power. To do this, they would need to remove HTS, which emerged as an al-Qaida offshoot but softened its politics, from their lists of “terrorist” organisations.
