The rapid downfall of Syrian leader Bashar Assad has touched off a new round of delicate geopolitical maneuvering between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

HMEIMIM AIRBASE, SYRIA — The Sukhoi fighter aircraft punched through the clouds, its growl echoing over Russia’s Hmeimim Airbase on Syria’s coast. Abu Zaid, a bearded militant with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, cocked his ear toward the roar.

Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

The Syrian regime’s collapse came more quickly than the rebels had dreamed — the circumstances were both serendipitous and part of a larger global realignment.

Moscow achieved its goals in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed during his annual press conference and a call-in program on Dec. 19. following the collapse of dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime. Commenting on the fall of Assad's regime for the first time, Putin said Russia invaded Syria to prevent the creation of "a terrorist enclave."

The reason? One was the gas dealings with Moscow, to which the regime owed debts. According to Dr. Tymon Pastucha from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Syria's potential as a transit country can still be exploited. This issue will be ...

Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

The sudden collapse of the long-established Assad family dictatorship in Syria changes the balance and constellation of competing forces in the Middle East. For many years, the Syrian government has been a client of Russia, and before that the Soviet Union. Turkey has also intervened, mainly in pursuit of the Kurd minority regarded as dangerous.

Bashar al-Assad was branded the "rat of Damascus" after fleeing to Moscow as his brutal regime collapsed. Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed Assad as a “monster” as the horrors of his prisons, where thousands of political inmates were locked up, tortured, and killed, were emerging.

After dusk, the president slipped out of the capital, flying covertly to a Russian military base in northern Syria and then on a Russian jet to Moscow, as per reports

Assad, who wielded fear and force over Syria for more than two decades, fled the country under the cover of night — and a fake political address.