People celebrate as rebels capture the Syrian capital Damascus, 8 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / HASAN BELAL

There has so far been studied silence from the Kremlin as the brutal 24-year-long rule of Syrian dictator and close Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad suddenly ended over the weekend, with pro-government forces laying down their arms as anti-Assad rebels entered the capital Damascus on Sunday.

While the whereabouts of Assad himself remain unknown, there is growing speculation that he may have been killed in a plane crash following the sudden disappearance from radar of a plane on which several sources say the dictator and his wife were travelling, which took off from Damascus Airport on Sunday morning.

Speaking in Qatar on Saturday after a meeting with representatives of Iran and Turkey aimed at preventing Syria from collapsing into chaos, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was imperative that the country not be allowed to fall into the hands of a “terrorist group” as the lightning advance on Damascus by Islamist-led rebels continued.

“It’s inadmissible to allow the terrorist group to take control of territory in violation of agreements,” Lavrov said in comments reported by AFP, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist militant group that is classed as a terrorist organisation by Russia as well as by most Western governments.

HTS has long been the most effective and deadly of the rebel groups fighting the Assad regime under the banner of Free Syria, though it was founded in 2011 as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. In 2016, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, publicly broke ranks with al-Qaeda, however, and has attempted to soften its image since then, according to the BBC.

While the Assad regime had been friendly with Russia for decades, it was only following Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in 2015 that Moscow and Damascus became close allies, with Kremlin support allowing Assad to retain power and it was Russia’s failure to come to Assad’s aid in recent weeks that proved instrumental in allowing rebel groups to retake Syria’s major cities in a matter of days, culminating in the fall of Damascus in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The fall of Assad will come as a huge blow to the Kremlin, not least as Russia has its sole military base outside the former Soviet Union in Hmeimim, as well as a naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus.

While Russian government agencies have remained silent on the events so far, members of the Russian opposition in exile were less circumspect in their reactions, with former political prisoner and senior opposition figure Ilya Yashin posting on X that Assad’s fall meant “one less dictator and Putin ally”, while, inverting Volodymyr Zelenksy’s famous quote on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Garry Kasparov wrote that “Assad needs a ride, not ammunition.”