MOSCOW - Dozens of Russians arrived home on Wednesday after fleeing Syria, relieved to be escaping the deprivation and horror of civil war but worried about an uncertain future back home.
“The Free Syrian Army is getting closer. We’ve been left
without money, without light, without water,” Natasha Yunis, who
ran a beauty salon in her adopted home of Damascus after meeting
her Syrian husband, said of rebel advances on the capital.
“A bomb exploded near our house … The children hid. Of
course it was horrible,” said Yunis, giving her age as about 60.
Russia has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main
protector in an uprising against his rule, but its Middle East
affairs envoy was quoted as saying last month that the rebels
could defeat Assad and that Moscow was preparing evacuation
plans in case they were needed.
It organised two flights to evacuate 77 men, women and
children from the Middle East country, where the United Nations
says 60,000 people have been killed in 22 months of bloodshed.
Both flights arrived in Moscow early on Wednesday.
The evacuations are the strongest signal yet that Russia may
be preparing for the possibility of Assad’s fall, but Moscow
insists the operation is not the start of a mass exodus of tens
of thousands of Russian citizens living in Syria.
Alfred Omar, 57, a resident of Syria married to a Russian
woman and dressed in an jacket from Russia’s Emergencies
Ministry, said Moscow’s policies had begun to threaten its own
citizens inside the country. His lower lip trembled as he spoke.
“It’s dangerous there for Russians. If the Free Syrian Army
understands that a person is Russian, they’ll immediately cut
off their head, because they (are seen to) support Assad’s
regime,” he said.
Moscow has protected Assad from three consecutive U.N.
Security Council resolutions intended to force him out or press
him to end the bloodshed.
Omar said he had left Syria because he did not want to
support one side or another.
“I am a simple citizen how can I change anything,” he said
on arrival at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
A spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry, which organised
the flights from Beirut to Moscow, said no more flights were
planned to bring Russians home. Russia has also said it has not
changed its policy on Syria.
But military officials have been quoted as saying that
warships in the Mediterranean Sea for naval exercises may also
be used to help evacuate Russians.
Many of the Russians in Syria are women who married Syrian
men over several decades, during which many families in Syria’s
elite sent their children to Soviet schools.
Others include employees in state companies that are still
operating in Syria.
WORRIES ABOUT THE FUTURE
For most of the people who arrived at Domodedovo airport in
the early hours of Wednesday, it was a hard goodbye to a country
with which Moscow forged strong ties in the Soviet era.
“It was very hard to decide to leave, but we lost everything
so we decided to come. The opposition is already in the region
where we were living,” said Natasha Yunis’ daughter, Anjelika
Yunis.
Her three children stood next to her, visibly exhausted by
what she described as a nearly 24-hour trip from Damascus to
Beirut, a departure point that passengers said was chosen
because of the danger around the Damascus airport.
She said she was going to St Petersburg, Russia’s second
city, where she and her mother had acquaintances.
“I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll try to find some work.
Maybe take a loan out and start a business,” she said dressed
against the cold in a long black coat.
Despite the evacuations, Moscow has not given any indication
that it is prepared to abandon its policy of opposing Assad’s
exit from power being a precondition for any political solution.
Russia was Syria’s top arms supplier in 2010, with nearly $1
billion in sales, and another $500 million expected for last
year, said Moscow-based defence think tank CAST.
Russia also maintains a naval maintenance and supply
facility at the Syrian port of Tartous. There was no indication
that Moscow was withdrawing any of its military personnel there
or diplomats.
