Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who is visiting Russia for the first time today, will ask Moscow to extradite ousted leader Bashar al-Assad, an unnamed Syrian government official told Agence France-Presse. The new Syrian leader has arrived in Moscow and is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
“President al-Sharaa will ask the Russian president to extradite all those who committed war crimes and are in Russia, first and foremost Bashar al-Assad,” said the Syrian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Syrian foreign ministry official said the planned agenda included “economic and political issues and the status of Russian military bases in Syria,” France 24 reported.
The Russian naval base in Tartus and the air base in Hmeimim, both on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, are Moscow’s only official military outposts outside the former Soviet Union.
Moscow used the bases extensively during its intervention in the Syrian civil war on Assad’s side in 2015, with intensive airstrikes on rebel-held areas.
Al-Sharaa was also scheduled to attend a Russian-Arab summit scheduled for today, but Moscow postponed it because many of the Arab leaders who were due to attend were involved in implementing the US ceasefire plan for the Gaza Strip, which took effect on Friday.
Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024 and fled to Russia.
The interim Syrian president is being accompanied by his foreign minister and military and economic officials on his visit to Moscow.
