Before He Fled, Assad Lied to Everyone About Plans

Bashar al-Assad likely saved his own life by escaping to Russia as rebels closed in on Damascus, Syria, and both Reuters and Bloomberg have reports on his final hours there. One key to his escape, apparently, is that Assad lied through his teeth to close associates and his military commanders right up until the moment he fled. Some highlights:

• Hours before he left, Assad assured a meeting of military and security chiefs that Russia would be sending help to ward off the advancing rebels any moment now, per Reuters, whose account is based on more than a dozen interviews with people familiar with Assad's movements. Assad, however, knew from a meeting at the Kremlin on Nov. 28 that Vladimir Putin would not be sending help.

• Assad told his presidential office manager and his media adviser on Saturday that he would be at home, but instead went to the airport.
• "Assad didn't even make a last stand," Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative think-tank, tells Reuters. "He didn't even rally his own troops. He let his supporters face their own fate."
• Assad's wife and three children were already in Moscow, but Assad didn't even tell his brother Maher, a military commander, who eventually flew himself to safety in a helicopter. Reuters reports that two maternal cousins were shot, one fatally, as they attempted to flee.
• Russian intelligence agents arranged Assad's escape, according to Bloomberg, first by flying him to a Russian air base in Syria, and from there to Moscow (with the plane's transponder shut off, to avoid tracking). Reuters suggests that Qatar and Turkey also played a role in the exit.
• Putin, too strapped with his war in Ukraine to help, is demanding to know why his intelligence agents failed to recognize the threat to longtime ally Assad before it was too late, per Bloomberg.
• Now that he's in Russia, Assad should theoretically be safe from prosecution for war crimes because he will not be extradited, per the BBC. His only risk is if he leaves Russia on his own—or, conceivably, if Putin finds him useful as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with the West.

(More Syria stories.)