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Syrian President Assad Arrives in Moscow, Set to Meet Putin

A photo released by the official Syrian Arab news agency (SANA) on 14 March shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative of the Russian President for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov (R), review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony upon the Syrian President's arrival at Vnukovo airport. (SANA/dpa)
A photo released by the official Syrian Arab news agency (SANA) on 14 March shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative of the Russian President for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov (R), review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony upon the Syrian President's arrival at Vnukovo airport. (SANA/dpa)
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Syrian President Assad Arrives in Moscow, Set to Meet Putin

A photo released by the official Syrian Arab news agency (SANA) on 14 March shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative of the Russian President for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov (R), review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony upon the Syrian President's arrival at Vnukovo airport. (SANA/dpa)
A photo released by the official Syrian Arab news agency (SANA) on 14 March shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L) and Russia's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative of the Russian President for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov (R), review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony upon the Syrian President's arrival at Vnukovo airport. (SANA/dpa)

Syrian President Bashar Assad arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, where he is scheduled to meet top ally Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia is a main backer of Assad and has a broad presence in Syria, where a 12-year uprising-turned-civil war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population. Moscow has played a pivotal role in fighting back armed opposition groups trying to topple Assad’s government through its military support, and has also aggressively backed Damascus against opponents at the United Nations.

The Kremlin confirmed Tuesday that Putin will meet with Assad on Wednesday — the anniversary of the conflict — in a statement carried by Russia’s state news agency Tass.

According to the statement, “further development of Russian-Syrian cooperation in the political, trade, economic and humanitarian spheres, as well as the prospects for a comprehensive settlement of the situation in and around Syria,” will be on the agenda.

Assad was received by Putin’s special representative for the Middle East, Mikhail Bogdanov, at Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport.

Prior to a deadly Feb. 6 earthquake that killed 50,000 people in Türkiye and Syria, Russia had been mediating talks to normalize relations between the two quake-hit countries.

Türkiye and Syria have been on opposite sides in Syria’s war for over a decade. Türkiye continues to back armed opposition groups that control a northwestern enclave in northwestern Syria. In December, Moscow hosted surprise talks between the Syrian and Turkish defense ministers.

Syria since last summer has recognized the Russian-controlled Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine as independent and sovereign entities.

The Syrian, Turkish and Russian deputy foreign ministers as well as a senior adviser to their Iranian counterpart are also set to hold talks Wednesday and Thursday in Moscow to discuss “counterterrorism efforts” in Syria.

Moscow is keen on arranging a meeting between Assad and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to cap its efforts to normalize relations between Türkiye and Syria.

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Red Cross Says Determining Fate of Syria’s Missing ‘Huge Challenge'

People hold portraits of missing relatives during a protest outside the Hijaz train station in the capital Damascus on December 27, 2024, calling for accountability for the perpetrators of crimes in Syria. (AFP)
People hold portraits of missing relatives during a protest outside the Hijaz train station in the capital Damascus on December 27, 2024, calling for accountability for the perpetrators of crimes in Syria. (AFP)
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Red Cross Says Determining Fate of Syria’s Missing ‘Huge Challenge'

People hold portraits of missing relatives during a protest outside the Hijaz train station in the capital Damascus on December 27, 2024, calling for accountability for the perpetrators of crimes in Syria. (AFP)
People hold portraits of missing relatives during a protest outside the Hijaz train station in the capital Damascus on December 27, 2024, calling for accountability for the perpetrators of crimes in Syria. (AFP)

Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria's civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.

"Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge," ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP in an interview.

The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when President Bashar al-Assad's forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.

Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria's jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.

Thousands have been released since opposition factions ousted Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of relatives and friends who went missing.

Spoljaric said the ICRC was working with the caretaker authorities, non-governmental organizations and the Syrian Red Crescent to collect data to give families answers as soon as possible.

But "the task is enormous," she said in the interview late Saturday.

"It will take years to get clarity and to be able to inform everybody concerned. And there will be cases we will never (be able) to identify," she added.

"Until recently, we've been following up on 35,000 cases, and since we established a new hotline in December, we are adding another 8,000 requests," Spoljaric said.

"But that is just potentially a portion of the numbers."

Spoljaric said the ICRC was offering the new authorities to "work with us to build the necessary institution and institutional capacities to manage the available data and to protect and gather what... needs to be collected".

Human Rights Watch last month urged the new Syrian authorities to "secure, collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records... that will be vital in future criminal trials".

The rights group also called for cooperation with the ICRC, which could "provide critical expertise" to help safeguard the records and clarify the fate of missing people.

Spoljaric said: "We cannot exclude that data is going to be lost. But we need to work quickly to preserve what exists and to store it centrally to be able to follow up on the individual cases."

More than half a century of brutal rule by the Assad family came to a sudden end in early December after a rapid opposition offensive swept across Syria and took the capital Damascus.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.