With rumours swirling about Bashar al-Assad’s alleged covert dealings with Israel, Russian state news agency Tass is boosting claims made in Turkish media that he struck a deal with Tel Aviv to allow him to safely flee Syria.
A columnist for Hurriyet alleged last week that the deposed dictator handed the Israelis the details of a number of Syrian military targets in return for allowing his plane to fly out of the country unharmed.
“A source I trust told me that Assad had given Israel documents showing the location of weapons depots, missile launchers and warplanes as a guarantee that he would not be shot by Israel as he fled,” Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in the Turkish newspaper.
“When we look at the operations carried out by Israel after Assad fled, I think that this information is not at all undeniable.”
Israel has bombed hundreds of military sites across the country in the days since Assad fled the country. Weapons storage sites, airfields and the naval fleet at Latakia have all been destroyed, heavily degrading the new government’s military capabilities.
Selvi’s article is the latest in a series of reports to claim the existence of covert links between the Assad regime and Tel Aviv, which helped keep the Syrian military out of Israel’s crosshairs. Photos of purportedly genuine documents surfaced online soon after Assad’s ouster, appearing to show that he secretly shared intelligence and assisted Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah and Iranian assets on Syrian territory.
Russia was one of Assad’s key backers through the country’s long civil war, and launched a major military intervention in 2015 that helped him retake the cities of Aleppo and Homs, and swathes of countryside in northern Syria.
But as rebel fighters led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) expanded their offensive, Moscow appears to have jettisoned support for its erstwhile Middle Eastern ally.
According to Turkey’s account of high-stakes talks in Doha in early December, it persuaded Russia and Iran to drop their support for Assad and allow the rebels to take power. Russia has since entered negotiations with the HTS-led transitional government to keep its strategically important bases but now appears to be prepping for a full withdrawal.
The Kremlin agreed to grant Assad asylum as opposition fighters closed in on Damascus and has been living in Moscow since fleeing the country on 8 December.
In the 12 days since his arrival, Russian president has not gone to meet him.
In his first statement since his ouster, Assad claimed on Monday that he didn’t plan to leave the country and that Russia had made the decision to evacuate him from its Khmeimim airbase in Latakia.
The statement, shared on the Syrian presidency’s Telegram channel, has since been deleted.