Leaving Syria was never an option for Abdullah (a pseudonym), who in 2018 refused the chance to be discharged from the army and travel abroad. Instead, he chose to stay and witness the collapse of the military institution he had served for years during the “Deter the Aggression” battles. After the fall of the regime, he remained hesitant about leaving, telling me via WhatsApp: “I didn’t feel I had committed a crime that required me to run away.”
“Shock and chaos” were the two words he used to describe the collapse of the Syrian army between late October 2024 and Bashar al-Assad’s flight. Abdullah recalls that the leadership abandoned them, officers fled their posts during the battles, and in the midst of this chaos, he deserted his final position in Homs and headed to the Latakia countryside where his relatives lived, hoping for a safe refuge.
Abdullah says: “I arrived at my relatives’ village at 4 a.m., and woke up to the news that Syria no longer had Bashar al-Assad. I was stunned at first, but the way the new authority and its forces behaved during the battles and in their statements made me optimistic that I might have a place in the new Syria. But I was wrong.”
Days later, he heard about the first “individual case” of a former officer killed under the Hmeimim bridge. That was when Abdullah, also a former officer, decided to flee. He didn’t go to the settlement centers in Latakia but instead tried crossing into Lebanon, staying for a week in a border village in the Akkar plain. Rumors of arrests of regime remnants there, combined with his sense of aimlessness and lack of prospects in Lebanon, pushed him back to Syria. For months afterward, his only concern was finding another country to escape to. That country turned out to be Russia.
Syrian Refugees in Russia
In 2016, Amnesty International condemned the Russian government’s attempt to deport three detained Syrian asylum seekers in Dagestan. The organization noted that in 2015, not a single Syrian was granted refugee status in Russia. Only 482 received temporary protection, while many others were reportedly denied asylum on the grounds that there were “no humanitarian reasons” to grant it.
By 2017, the Syrian community in Russia numbered around 7,000, including about 2,000 asylum seekers. Yet by 2020, refugee rights groups noted that only two Syrians had ever been granted formal refugee status in Russia, one in 2012 and another who had arrived before 2011.
After the fall of the regime in Syria and Bashar al-Assad’s flight to Russia, Moscow opened its doors for asylum and humanitarian protection to more Syrians—former officers, soldiers, and civilians, many of whom entered through the Russian base at Hmeimim on the Syrian coast. Their numbers swelled after the coastal massacres. It was rumored that Hmeimim base alone housed about 10,000 Syrians from the coastal region and the Alawite minority.
Public information about Syrian refugees in Russia remains scarce. Russian reports mention, for example, the arrival of 95 asylum seekers this year in Yekaterinburg, one of 12 regions designated to host Syrian refugees, where they will undergo “integration courses.” Some reports cite the arrival of about 150 refugees in Perm Oblast. While other reports suggest that as many as 100,000 Syrians may arrive in Russia as refugees during 2025.
The Beginning of Asylum
On March 6, 2025, gunfire echoed in every direction across the Latakia countryside, and the swirl of rumors was even louder. Abdullah, still an unsanctioned ex-officer, was swept into a storm of panic and confusion. That evening, with fear in his eyes, he watched crowds rush toward the Hmeimim military base in search of safety. Chaos and violence ruled. He wondered about his family’s fate outside the base.
Earlier that day, he had been fasting in his relatives’ village, waiting for iftar, when the sounds of clashes erupted and rumors spread that Russian forces had seized full control of the Syrian coast. After hours of uncertainty, he decided to head to nearby Hmeimim base to see for himself.
As he walked, he heard yet another rumor: government troops had withdrawn to the naval academy. Near the road leading to what was once Bassel al-Assad Airport, he suddenly saw a group of young men in Syrian General Security uniforms.
The scene was deeply unsettling. For months, Abdullah had carefully avoided anything that could draw suspicion. He rushed past them, greeting them quickly before hurrying to the base gates. Once inside, he pulled out his phone and shakily texted his mother to come immediately, realizing that many of the rumors he had heard were false. Under the circumstances, taking refuge in the base seemed the safest option.
When he entered, he didn’t imagine that this would be the day his hidden military identity would surface and place him on the list of those leaving Syria, awaiting “deliverance from this hell.” Inside, he found others who had applied for asylum through the consulate, some who had been summoned by relatives in Russia, and many other former soldiers, all waiting for their turn to be flown out.
Inside the Base
Hmeimim guards confiscated Abdullah’s phone, leaving him anxious and in the dark about his family for two days. At first, the flow of people was slow, but soon the numbers swelled alarmingly. Hours passed without word of his family. The next day came grim news: his relative, where his mother had been staying, was shot dead during a raid on his house.
With that news, Abdullah’s inner turmoil grew alongside the violence outside the base. He and the others could hear the sounds of clashes and gunfire from beyond the gates, sometimes sporadic, sometimes continuous, as gray smoke billowed from houses burning in the nearby horizon. As the fighting drew closer to the base, the reception hall and both the inner and outer courtyards of the airport filled with desperate crowds seeking safety.
The base was not equipped to receive such numbers, and the night air in March carried the cries of fear and confusion along with the cold wind. Abdullah found himself forced to merge into the throng, spreading his mat on the ground in the airport’s inner courtyard. Russian forces distributed blankets and tents to children, women, and the elderly. The sound of gunfire and clashes persisted for two full days before gradually subsiding. Although the base itself was never directly hit, the constant hum of reconnaissance drones belonging to the new Syrian government circled overhead in the days that followed, a chilling reminder that danger had not disappeared.
Abdullah stayed at the base for more than three months. Time was heavy, governed by a rigid military routine: everything was run according to strict orders, and civilian movements were bound by exact schedules. This disoriented many civilians. As Abdullah explained: “But this is normal, you are in a military base… the rules here are clear, security comes first, and the soldiers aren’t trained to deal with refugees as they should be. They are fighters, not humanitarian workers.”
Every morning began with a short assembly where tasks were assigned to the tents. Each tent had a civilian head responsible for organizing chores. These were basic duties like cleaning and keeping order, yet they felt burdensome in the shadow of constant risk and endless waiting.
The first days of winter were the hardest. Winds battered the tents, and families rushed to hold them down before they turned into lethal hazards. Heavy rain soaked the ground until it became nothing but mud, a scene captured in videos later leaked from the base.
During that period, the base even set up a tent to teach Russian to those interested. The management of the displaced was as orderly as possible; discipline and adherence to rules were expected, though the military lifestyle left many frustrated.
In the first twenty days, the displaced split into three groups. The first was a large gathering outside the base: terrified people who had fled during the coastal massacres, settling in the forest next to the base or in a cluster of rooms locals called the “Emirati Building.” They named the place simply “the camp.”
Inside the base, Russians erected tents in the airport courtyard where Abdullah stayed. That area came to be called “the barracks,” perhaps because of the strictly militarized life there. The third group, numbering in the hundreds, lay on the tiled floor of the airport terminal itself, in conditions Abdullah described as miserable.
As time passed, Russian forces merged the two internal groups into tents inside the base after more supplies arrived, particularly once many decided to return home when the situation outside calmed somewhat. Yet hundreds clung to the hope of leaving, determined to wait for departure.
The external camp, meanwhile, received none of the base’s services like food or tents. Still, residents felt safer near the base after witnessing so much violence and killings based on identity. Later, this camp became a hub of petty trade and profiteering. As Abdullah recalled, some individuals exploited people’s desperation, convincing them to pay money in hopes of faster admission into the base.
On May 20, 2025, an unknown group attacked the Hmeimim Russian base in Syria, sparking heavy clashes and downing a drone. Two were killed and others wounded, prompting the base to raise its security alert. When I asked Abdullah about the attack, he told me: “We heard gunfire and clashes, but we were used to it, since the naval academy was so close. We didn’t know what really happened until the next day.”
He added that sudden protective measures were common, like abruptly evacuating the external camp into the terminal when the Russians sensed a threat. What stood out most to Abdullah was the language barrier: Russian soldiers did not speak Arabic, so communication was only through interpreters. Yet, he noted, they helped people as much as they could.
To Moscow!
Weeks later, Abdullah boarded a cargo plane with improvised seating. After a five-hour flight, he landed in Moscow, where a delegation from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations received him and the others. They interviewed him, processed his humanitarian asylum application, and handed him a paper granting him temporary residency in Russia for two years as a refugee.
He spent his first days in a center near the airport before being relocated to housing run by the ministry, which he later learned had originally been prepared for Ukrainian refugees. When I asked him about daily life there, he laughed: “It’s another routine life, but better than what we had back there (in Syria). Still, I live on waiting… I wish to return to my country someday, but…”
