Russia has offered refuge to several autocratic leaders who have lost their power. Many of them have applied to live in the same luxury area on the outskirts of Moscow.
Simo Ortamo,
Yrjö Kokkonen,
Eva Sarlin
Syria’s deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia with his wife and three children. Comfortable living conditions are likely to await the family.
Russia has given asylum to several autocratic leaders who have lost their power in recent decades. It has accommodated them in particular in one particular luxury residential area located west of Moscow.
The name of the area is Bariviha.
Bariviha and the surrounding Rublyovka area are popular with Russia’s super-rich and power elite. The region is full of luxurious mansions surrounded by high fences.
In the Bariviha shopping center you can buy, for example, clothes from Ferrari and European luxury fashion brands.
This is how the luxury villas in Barivih look like:
At least the former president of Kyrgyzstan has lived in Bariviha Askar Akayev, Leader of the rebel region of Adjara, Georgia Aslan Abashidze and the late president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević family, the newspaper The New York Times says.
President Milošević himself ended up being tried by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Holland, instead of Moscow.
Also the former president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was said to have moved to Bariviha after he was ousted by Ukrainians in a revolution in 2014.
News site Meduza later identified Yanukovych’s residence as the guest house of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which is five kilometers from Barivyha.
Al-Assad was not supposed to become the leader of Syria
Born in 1965, Bashar al-Assad ruled Syria for more than 20 years. He rose to Syria’s leadership in 2000 when his father, an autocratic president Hafez al-Assad died in.
Originally, father al-Assad had envisioned Bashar’s older brother Bassel as his successor. However, he died in a car accident in 1994.
When his brother died, Bashar was in London studying to become an ophthalmologist. His father invited him back to his homeland and began training him to be his successor.
Bashar studied at the Homs Military Academy and he began to be known to the people through public appearances.
After his father’s death, Bashar al-Assad became president in a referendum, where he received 97.3 percent of the vote, according to official figures. Bashar was the only candidate in the election.
The young wife polished her public image
At the beginning of the 21st century, it was hoped in the West that a young gentleman who had studied in Britain and behaved calmly would change his father’s hard political line.
The first years were indeed promising. Bashar liberated business life and culture. He also released political prisoners, although not nearly all of them.
Bashar’s British-born wife helped polish his reputation Asma al-Assad.
The couple had met in London and married in 2000, when Asma was 25 years old. Their three children are currently in their twenties.
The daughter of a Syrian doctor and diplomat had studied IT and French literature at King’s College London and worked at an investment bank in New York.
The modern and fashionable young spouse tried to convey the image of Syria as a tolerant and reforming country.
For example, Vogue magazine called Asma al-Assad “the rose of the desert” in its extensive personal story published in 2011. The newspaper later removed the story from the web, The Atlantic magazine says.
Al-Assad brutally crushed the uprising
The Arab Spring, a democratic movement that began in 2011, revealed the true nature of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
The president decided to suppress opponents of the regime with extreme brutality.
Security forces shot thousands of demonstrators demanding civil liberties into the streets. They also threw thousands into prisons where torture was a daily occurrence.
The tough measures did not stop the popular uprising, which expanded into an armed rebellion all over the country. The Syrian army used heavy weaponry and also chemical weapons against rebels and civilians.
More than 600,000 people have died in the civil war, the observer organization SOHR says. Millions have been forced to leave their homes.
The Syrian army was helped by the forces of Russia, Iran and the extremist organization Hezbollah.
The army defeated the rebels during 2018. However, there remained an area in the northwestern part of the country that was controlled by extremist Islamic groups. Similarly, Kurdish forces held power in the northeast.
Bashar Al-Assad’s power came to an end when the rebels realized that his supporters, namely Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, were weak. Al-Assad’s power finally crumbled in just over a week, and Russia took him to safety in Moscow.
Article sources: CNN, Al-Jazeera, Sky News, The Guardian.