Russia scrambled to shoot down claims that exiled dictator Bashar al-Assad’s London-born wife Asma filed for divorce and wants to leave with her children to the UK.
Turkish media dropped a bombshell report on Saturday that Asma al-Assad, 49, was fed up with her asylum in Russia and wanted to build a new life in London. The report claimed she filed for divorce just two weeks after her family fled Syria ahead of a rebel advance into Damascus.
The report suggested Asma was fed up with Russian restrictions that confine her and her three children to the city of Moscow, and that she wanted access to top-quality treatment as she fights leukemia.
The Kremlin was quick to deny the claim.
“[Rumors of the divorce] do not correspond to reality,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the BBC.
Peskov also denied claims that the family was confined to Moscow and that their assets had been frozen.
Asma al-Assad was raised in the UK and moved to Syria at 25. She married Bashar al-Assad shortly after he assumed the presidency.
She had long been an object of fascination for the West and was even for a time seen as a women’s rights icon in the Middle East.
In 2011, Vogue magazine called her “a rose in the desert” and described her as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies” in an article that came out months after a popular uprising across Syria that later devolved into full-scale civil war.
She still enjoys dual British-Syrian citizenship, but UK foreign minister David Lammy recently said she would not be allowed back and that her British passport may soon be revoked.
“I want it confirmed that she’s a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK,” Lammy said in a speech to parliament earlier this month.
As for Asma’s husband: The longtime Russian ally claimed he never intended to live as an exile and had initially fled Damascus to meet with Russian forces “to oversee combat operations” when rebels marched on the capital, according to the dictator’s Telegram channel.
He said he was airlifted away by Russian troops as Damascus fell, but claims he is leading the country from abroad.
