Nestled in a pine forest on the outskirts of Moscow is the idyllic town of Barvikha. It’s home to Vladimir Putin’s health resort, several villas owned by Russia’s elite, and a veritable laundry list of luxury stores including Ralph Lauren and Gucci. Barvikha has one more notable distinction, as the New York Times notes: it is “a magnet for deposed leaders given asylum in Russia.” The town is home to several former politicians who sought political refuge in Russia after being overthrown during popular revolutions. These include former leaders of Yugoslavia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Georgia. However, the lives of these political exiles vary widely. Most spend their days hidden within sprawling estates, venturing out occasionally in their Aston Martins or Bentleys. Some have gained employment, while others live under house arrest. As rebel forces toppled the Assad regime in Syria earlier last week, reports confirmed that its former president, Bashar Al-Assad, and his family, had fled to Russia, in keeping with Putin’s policy of offering safe haven to his friends and allies. However, as Russia aims to negotiate an agreement with the new Syrian government to keep its bases in the country operational, many have questioned the logic of this strategy. Assad The first reason why Putin maintains this policy of political asylum is fairly intuitive. To convince regimes in power to align with Russia, their leaders have to know that Moscow has their back in case anything goes wrong. According to Lina Khatib, a fellow at Chatham House, Russia’s involvement in Syria began in earnest during the Barack Obama administration. As America prepared to withdraw from the Middle East, Moscow saw an opportunity to insert itself into the regional order. In a 2024 article (Assad's Fall is the Middle East's 1989) for Foreign Policy Magazine, Khatib writes that when Iran and its proxies failed to prop up the Assad regime on their own, “Moscow saw the Syrian war as a low-cost opportunity to reclaim its status as a global power and arbiter of the region.” Thus, for nearly a decade, Russia became a major actor in the Middle East, forming a de-facto alliance with regional pariahs such as Iran and Syria. The strength of that alliance was directly linked to Putin’s relationship with Assad. Since 2013, Russia has invested billions of dollars to support Assad’s regime, securing a foothold in the Middle East and leases for two strategically vital military bases. In return, Russia’s air force carried out thousands of airstrikes against opposition groups in Syrian cities. An investigation by the Financial Times revealed that Assad’s extended family purchased at least 18 luxury apartments in a single Moscow complex, seeking to safeguard their wealth during the civil war and amidst international sanctions. His children also maintained ties to Russia; they vacationed at a Crimean seaside resort after Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014, and in 2023, Assad’s oldest son, Hafez, completed a master’s degree in mathematics at Moscow State University. The former first lady attended his graduation ceremony as part of a special delegation to Moscow. This partnership gained even more significance after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Previously, Moscow maintained a delicate balance between Iran and Israel. In an article titled What the Fall of Aleppo Means for Russia in Foreign Policy Magazine, academic Hamidreza Azizi argues that after the invasion of Ukraine, and particularly following Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, Russia has aligned more closely with the Axis of Resistance. This shift includes openly criticising Israeli strikes and relinquishing key positions in central and eastern Syria to Iranian-backed forces, ostensibly to prevent rebel exploitation of Russia’s reduced ground forces and private military contractors in the region. Moreover, Moscow has championed the normalisation and reintegration of the Assad regime into the Arab world, culminating in Syria’s readmission to the Arab League in May 2023. Russia’s objectives in these efforts include leveraging Gulf financial resources for Syria’s reconstruction and bolstering the Assad regime’s international legitimacy. However, Russia appears less inclined to preserve Assad’s status than it has with other leaders, such as ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, whom Moscow still regards as the rightful leader of Ukraine. Anna Matveeva, a visiting senior research fellow at King’s College London, told CBC News that Russian media’s portrayal of Assad has recently been “unflattering,” avoiding overt condemnation but refraining from portraying him as a heroic figure. Matveeva, who briefly met Hafez al-Assad in 2019 at a cultural event in Damascus, stated that Russia’s offer of asylum to Assad’s family likely serves strategic purposes. The arrangement ensures Assad’s compliance with Moscow’s interests while preventing his fate from mirroring that of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine The second reason Russia grants political asylum is to keep open the possibility of reinstating a deposed leader by creating a government in exile. That is the case with several members of the former pro-Kremlin government. Ukrainian political exiles in Russia include its former president, prime minister, defence minister, interior minister, aides, prosecutors, and other allies of the pro-Russia administration. According to Ukrainian national news agency Ukrinform, one leader claims to have bought a 15-acre plot of farmland by begging for money outside a church. Another owns a home equipped with elevators, a tasting room, a wine cellar, a music lounge, a swimming pool with spa area, gyms, six bathrooms, and a home theatre system. Several are heads of charitable foundations, think tanks, or political groups campaigning for Russia’s annexation of Ukraine. One was charged with embezzlement, another was left destitute and a third was imprisoned. Most, however, remain in the shadows. Russia’s provision of political asylum to former Ukrainian leaders serves as a calculated strategy to maintain influence over Ukraine through the creation of puppet governments in exile. This tactic not only bolsters Russia’s efforts to delegitimise the current Ukrainian government but also aligns with its broader narrative of protecting Russian-speaking populations. By framing its actions in Ukraine as a continuation of this struggle, the Kremlin distracts its population from the growing authoritarianism at home. The annexation of Crimea and the promotion of separatist movements in eastern Ukraine were pivotal in this narrative. However, as the war in Ukraine drags on, with mounting sanctions, falling oil prices, and staunch Ukrainian resistance, Russia has had to escalate its efforts. One example of this strategy is the creation of the Ukraine Salvation Committee in August 2015. Led by Mykola Azarov, Ukraine’s last prime minister under Yanukovych, the committee explicitly advocates for regime change in Ukraine. Its members include Vladimir Oleynik, a former pro-Russian parliamentarian; Oleg Tsarev, a Novorossiya advocate; and entrepreneur Igor Markov, who has a history of violence against pro-Ukrainian demonstrators. These figures represent a shadow government designed to undermine Kyiv’s legitimacy and potentially serve as a replacement if Russian forces succeed in toppling Ukraine’s democratically elected leadership. Russia’s support for Yanukovych further underscores this tactic. Since fleeing Ukraine in 2014, Yanukovych has lived in exile in Russia. Reports indicate that he was recently positioned in Belarus, ready to assume leadership if Russia were to overthrow Ukraine’s government. By granting asylum to former Ukrainian leaders, Russia not only provides them with protection but also leverages them as tools to destabilise Ukraine and bolster its claims to legitimacy in the region. These leaders, housed safely within Russia’s borders, are used to rally separatist forces, influence Russian-speaking refugees, and serve as bargaining chips in international negotiations. Spies The third reason Russia grants political asylum is to protect its intelligence sources and publicly demonstrate what they believe to be Western hypocrisy. Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia, granted in 2013, situates him within a long history of defectors used as political pawns in the geopolitical chessboard between East and West. His arrival in Moscow symbolised not only a blow to the US intelligence but also a revival of a Cold War-era strategy – exploiting Western defectors to serve Russia’s strategic and propaganda needs. Russia’s decision to grant Snowden asylum was as much about geopolitical strategy as humanitarian posturing. Senator Chuck Schumer likened Putin’s actions to those of Hugo Chávez, emphasising the symbolic act of “poking a finger in the eye” of the United States. This gesture served to retaliate against US sanctions and criticisms, such as those stemming from the Sergei Magnitsky case. By harbouring Snowden, the Kremlin sought to portray itself as a bastion of resistance against Western hypocrisy on human rights while simultaneously highlighting the flaws in US intelligence practices. Snowden’s defection mirrors the fates of numerous high-profile individuals who found themselves in Russia under circumstances shaped by ideological conflict and espionage. Like the Cambridge Five, a group of British spies who passed secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War, Snowden became part of a system where defectors were both celebrated and controlled. Members of the Cambridge Five such as Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, experienced a mix of privilege and isolation in their Moscow exiles. Burgess and Maclean’s relocation to Kuybyshev, a drab industrial city far removed from Moscow’s cosmopolitan allure, was an early indication of what life as a defector entailed. For Maclean, the transition was less jarring. Fluent in Russian within a few years and equipped with an intellectual rigor that impressed his hosts, he carved out a meaningful existence as an academic and policy analyst. Burgess, by contrast, floundered. A man of sharp wit but little inclination for adaptation, he chafed against the cultural and personal constraints of life in exile. Kuybyshev’s gloom reminded him of the gritty industrial towns of his native Britain, but the Soviet Union lacked the vibrant intellectual and social circles he once relished. He drank heavily, complained bitterly, and harboured an enduring fantasy of returning to England, convinced he could bluff his way out of espionage charges. Philby’s journey, though similar in trajectory, underscored the Soviet Union’s transactional approach to its defectors. Upon his arrival in Moscow in 1963, he discovered that his lofty expectations of rank and privilege were a mirage. A colonel in name only, Philby found himself relegated to the fringes of KGB operations, under surveillance and largely marginalised. Similarly, defectors like NSA cryptologists William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, who fled to the Soviet Union in 1960, became disillusioned with their choices, describing their exile as ‘foolhardy.’ Not all asylum seekers have been successful in their attempts to resettle in Russia. In 1990, the former East German communist politician, Erich Honecker, was denied asylum after the fall of the Berlin Wall and was extradited to Germany to face charges of human rights abuses. Similarly, in 1998, the leader of the once Communist-leaning Kurdistan Workers Party, Abdullah Ocalan, fled from Syria to Moscow. He was denied admission twice. In fact, political asylum is so rare, only one case has been documented over the last 36 years. Instead, Russia tends to grant temporary asylum – renewed every year – or offer citizenship. The distinction is subtle but important. Moscow can assist its former allies but on paper can deny any long-term responsibility for their welfare. In granting temporary asylum to controversial figures like Snowden, Ukrainian ex-leaders, and Assad, Russia has consistently demonstrated a calculated approach to extending its geopolitical influence. Whether shielding defectors from the West, propping up a puppet government-in-exile, or providing safe harbour to embattled allies, Moscow’s strategy is rooted in leveraging these individuals as symbols of defiance against its adversaries. As senior lawmaker Alexei Chepa told Russian news service RTS, “Everyone knows that (Putin) always protects his friends and acquaintances, Russia never abandons its own.”
