the Kremlin’s balancing act

After several days of uncertainty over the fate of the fallen dictator, the Russian deputy foreign minister finally confirmed the presence of Bashar al-Assad in Russia.

It therefore took 48 hours for a senior Russian official to officially confirm the presence of Bashar al-Assad in the country. The overthrown Syrian president has indeed found exile in Russia, confirmed Sergei Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, in an interview with the American channel NBC, broadcast Tuesday, December 10.

This is information that was nevertheless hardly in doubt: the Kremlin had leaked the information informally, as early as Sunday evening and the capture of Damascus by the rebels. The Russian presidency, however, refused on Monday to confirm the presence on its soil of the deposed leader.

But this delay says something about the embarrassment reigning in Moscow around the Syrian issue. On the one hand, Russia must show that it is not abandoning its protégés: “In such a situation, it would not be right at all for me to detail what happened and how it happened but (Mr Assad) is safe“, explained Sergei Ryabkov, slipping that “This shows that Russia is acting as it should in such an extraordinary situation“. Russia has intervened militarily since 2015 in support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where the war began in 2011 with the brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrations.

Asked whether Moscow would hand over the former Syrian president for trial at the request of the Syrian people or the International Criminal Court, the Russian official replied that Russia “was not a party to the treaty that established the ICC“. A message directly addressed to the jurisdiction, but also to other autocrats benefiting from the support of Moscow.

Still, on the other hand, Russian diplomacy must also avoid offending the new Syrian authorities too much. The Kremlin is in fact currently negotiating the future of its military bases in Syria, which it absolutely needs to ensure the logistics of its establishments in Africa. A balancing act that the Russians are quite accustomed to.