Syria’s ousted dictator Bashar Assad fled to Moscow when he was driven from power and has reportedly settled into a new life as a celebrity ophthalmologist since his usefulness to the Russian government has come to an end.
Bashar Assad received a degree from Damascus University in Syria and practiced at an eye hospital in London before the death of his father Hafez in the year 2000 brought him back to inherit his family’s cruel throne. Western critics marveled at the contrast between the brutality of the younger Assad’s regime and his medical oaths, while dissidents in Damascus taunted “The Doctor” and predicted he would be the next strongman to fall in the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.
The dissidents were wrong about that. Assad launched a brutal civil war to remain in power that turned Syria into one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters over 13 grueling years. He almost lost the war at what became a pivotal halfway mark, but heavy financial and military intervention by his patrons in Russia and Iran kept him in power as war dragged on.
In December 2024, Russia and Iran were so weakened by their other military adventures that an alliance of jihadis and insurgents managed to seize Damascus in a lightning-fast offensive, and the Assad family fled to Moscow. A friend of the family told the UK Guardian on Monday that, one year later, Bashar Assad is “studying Russian and brushing up on his ophthalmology again.”
“It’s a passion of his, he obviously doesn’t need the money. Even before the war in Syria began, he used to regularly practice his ophthalmology in Damascus,” the friend said, delicately alluding to the sizable chunk of the Syrian national treasury that Assad absconded with.
According to the Guardian’s other sources, the Assads are “likely to reside in the prestigious Rublyovka, a gated community of Moscow’s elite,” which is the same gilded cage where Russia’s former man in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, has lived for the past decade.
The family friend said Assad’s pampered post-dictatorial life is a lonely one, as he has little contact with the dismayed former henchmen he left behind in Syria and the Russian regime has no further use for him.
“Putin has little patience for leaders who lose their grip on power, and Assad is no longer seen as a figure of influence or even an interesting guest to invite to dinner,” the source noted.
Assad allegedly left all of his allies and servants twisting in the wind when he fled Damascus, lining his pockets with cash and hopping on the first helicopter out of the palace as the rebels closed in. After helping his wife Asma through experimental Russian treatments for her leukemia, Assad expressed a desire to rehabilitate his image, but the Putin regime scuttled his planned media blitz, apparently preferring for the world to forget about him.
“Have you heard anything from him? You haven’t, because he is not allowed to — but he is safe and alive,” Russian Ambassador to Iraq Elbrus Kutrashev growled in a November interview, marking one of the few times Russian officials have commented on their obsolete former client.
Judging from some comments by Bashar Assad’s 24-year-old son and former heir apparent Hafez, the Syrian dictator was planning to tell the world that he did not willingly abandon his allies or his throne in Damascus but was pressured to leave by the Russians. This could go a long way toward explaining why the Bashar Assad media comeback tour of 2025 never happened.
Assad’s plans to move out of Moscow to a more congenial retirement in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have apparently been nixed as well, in part because the mass-murdering former strongman of Syria is a little too radioactive for even the highly flexible Emiratis to entertain as a guest.
While the Guardian report suggested Assad’s wife and children are spending his ill-gotten fortune on luxury goods and club memberships in Moscow, Reuters reported in early December that senior figures from his inner circle are funneling millions of dollars to loyalists in Syria and plotting to overthrow the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“Two of the men once closest to Assad, Maj. Gen. Kamal Hassan and billionaire Rami Makhlouf, are competing to form militias in coastal Syria and Lebanon made up of members of their minority Alawite sect, long associated with the Assad family, Reuters found. All told, the two men and other factions jostling for power are financing more than 50,000 fighters in hope of winning their loyalty,” the report said.
Hassan is allegedly dreaming about arming and funding a secessionist movement among the Alawites, the offbeat sect of Shia Islam that Assad and his ruling elite belonged to, while Makhlouf thinks he can win an “apocalyptic final battle” with the insurgent junta. They both have access to money, weapons, and hidden bunkers built during the Assad regime, but they have struggled to attract backing from outside powers for their planned uprising. They also reportedly hate each other too much to cooperate, and neither of them seems able to win over Bashar Assad’s brother Maher, an influential military leader who still commands some loyalty from Syrian Army veterans.
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