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Asma al-Assad

Assad’s wife given ‘50/50 chance’ of survival as leukaemia returns

Asma al-Assad is thought to have flown to Moscow for treatment some time before the Kremlin persuaded her husband to flee in the face of lightning rebel advances.

  • Updated
  • Ben Farmer
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Iron ore faces ‘riot point’; Airliner crashes; Bushfire threat rises

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Volodymyr Zelensky, who said Vladimir Putin “deliberately chose Christmas to attack”.

Russia’s Christmas Day attacks ‘inhuman’, Ukraine says

Nearly three years into the war, the strikes wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk.

  • Updated
  • Pavel Polityuk
The Azerbaijan Airlines’ crash on Christmas Day.

Azerbaijani airliner crashes in Kazakhstan, killing dozens

The Embraer 190 was flying from Baku to the Russian city of Grozny when it tried an emergency landing. Remarkably, many passengers survived. Watch the footage.

  • Katie Marie Davies

This Month

The footage of Oscar Jenkins, with his wrists bound, was shared widely by pro-Russian social media accounts.

Toorak cricket club to Ukraine war zone: Russia takes Aussie prisoner

Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins may be the first Australian captured by Russia while fighting for Ukraine, and the government is urging Russia to respect international laws.

  • Updated
  • James Hall and Michael Read
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits troops in October.

Why North Korean troops are now a problem for Putin

Many have expressed surprise at the apparent naivety of the Asian troops, under live fire for the first time.

  • Iain Hollingshead
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad piled almost $400m in cash onto planes and fly them to Russia, before his regime fell.

How Assad secretly sent 21 planeloads of Syria’s cash to Moscow

The near-broke central bank sent almost $400 million in bulk shipments between 2018 and 2019 to Russia when the dictator was indebted to the Kremlin.

  • Miles Johnson, Mehul Srivastava and Chloe Cornish
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ASX dives 2pc; Shayne Elliott’s $3m bonus hit; JobKeeper ‘saved jobs’

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Investigators stand at the site where Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device.

The vast spy agency behind Russian general’s death

The assassination of Igor Kirillov marked the latest strike in a shadow war between Kyiv and Moscow. It was carried out by Ukraine’s intelligence service, the SBU.

  • Christopher Miller and Max Seddon
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$22b budget blowout; WFH is an ASX mess; The $3b Aussie wealth manager

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Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov was killed by an explosive device.

Ukraine kills Russia’s nuclear forces boss with e-scooter bomb

An explosive device planted near a Moscow apartment building slayed Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov.

  • Updated
  • Anton Troianovski and Constant Méheut
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Softbank woos Trump; Mother of all bubbles; 3 infuriating charts

Read everything that’s happened in the news so far today.

Bashar al-Assad has reportedly been taken in by Russia.

Assad says Russia forced him to flee Syria

Former president Bashar al-Assad said he wanted to stay and fight the rebels, but he was trapped on a Russian military base in Syria that was under attack.

  • Sarah El Deeb and Bassem Mroue
Expatriate Syrians gather in Berlin this week to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime.

‘We need time’: Syrians in Europe resist calls to return home

Those who fled the 13-year civil war pointed to the political uncertainty after a rebel offensive swept into Damascus over the weekend.

  • Laura Pitel, Eleni Varvitsioti and Amy Kazmin
Banners calling for the impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol displayed outside the National Assembly in Seoul this week.

South Korean upheaval rattles US plan to counter China

There are questions over whether a new government in Seoul might complicate Washington’s efforts under Donald Trump to counter the rise of China as a military superpower.

  • Edward White, Christian Davies, Leo Lewis and Demetri Sevastopulo
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Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma (centre) with their children (from left) Zein, Hafez and Karim outside the Great Mosque of Aleppo in 2022.

No dinner with Putin, but Assad will not lack for luxury in Moscow

Nothing has been seen of the murderous Syrian tyrant since he fled Damascus, but he joins a dubious list of pro-Kremlin former dictators living in Moscow.

  • James Kilner
People shoot in the air as they celebrate the fall of the Syrian government in Damascus.

New day dawns for Syria after Assad flees to Moscow

The swift and surprise toppling of President Bashar al-Assad is sending shockwaves through the Middle East and the world – especially in Moscow and Tehran.

  • Updated
  • Hans van Leeuwen
Bashar and Asma talk with artists in 2018 in one of the tunnels that were dug by rebels near Damascus. The image was released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian presidency.

Stubborn Assad’s fall was unexpected. But the signs were always there

Bashar al-Assad missed numerous opportunities to recast himself both at home and abroad.

  • Liz Sly
Syrian opposition fighters ride on a motorcycle past Syrian army planes at the Al-Nayrab military airport after they took control of the facility in the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, on Monday.

What led to Syria’s 13-year civil war, and why has fighting surged again?

The sudden assault by Syrian rebels has redrawn the front lines of a war many thought was over. Here’s what to know.

  • Kelly Kasulis Cho and Kelsey Baker
Kash Patel says he would shut down the FBI’s headquarters.

Kash Patel, from ‘not a credible witness’ to pick to lead the FBI

Patel has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump for years and has said he would upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission.

  • Eric Tucker and Alan Suderman

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/russian-federation-exd