The French newspaper "Les Buces" discussed in a report the sequence of events that led to the collapse of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his escape to Moscow

The newspaper, which described Assad as the "Butcher of Damascus", said that days after the armed groups took control of Damascus, the vision of the way Assad chose to escape became clear.

When the armed groups launched their attack on Aleppo in northern Syria, Bashar al-Assad was in Moscow where his wife Asma was receiving treatment for cancer

Assad did not attend the defense session of his son Hafez's doctoral thesis, despite the presence of all family members, and returned to Damascus on November 30

Monday, December 2

Assad received Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Damascus, and he appeared clearly upset, and admitted that his army was too weak to put up an effective resistance, and Tehran feared that Israel would use its intervention as a pretext to target its forces, and thus Assad realized that his fate was inevitable, and decided to leave the country that his family had ruled since 1971

Saturday, December 7

Assad held a meeting of about 30 military leaders at the Ministry of Defense, and told his leaders and comrades after his trip to Moscow that military support was coming, and he did not inform his younger brother Maher of his exit plan, so Maher was forced to flee on a helicopter to Iraq, and from there he was able to reach Russia.

On the same day, Assad called his political advisor, Bouthaina Shaaban, in the afternoon and asked her to prepare a speech for him and present it to the political committee that was scheduled to meet on Sunday morning. At 10 pm, she called him back, but he did not answer the phone

"The president will make a statement very soon,” Kamel Sakr, the presidency’s media director, told reporters. After midnight, an intelligence officer called him to tell him everyone had left the building.

Sunday, December 8

Assad was no longer there, traveling to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia and then on to Moscow.

Bashar al-Assad’s family — his wife Asma and three children — were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former associates and a senior regional official