How Putin will make Assad pay for his exile

‘Brave Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee?’ asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after the Syrian dictator escaped embattled Damascus for Moscow at the weekend. Assad was granted asylum in the Russia capital on the ‘humanitarian grounds’ he had denied his own subjects for so long. But what kind of life is Putin offering him?

On the face of it, the answer is a rather opulent one, even if in practice it means becoming part of one of the most rarified zoos of all: Putin’s collection of ex-dictators. West of Moscow, a little way beyond the city’s MKAD orbital motorway along the A-106 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, lies the village of Barvikha. From the main road, it is pretty undistinguished, but as soon as you head into the side streets, you notice the opulent dachas – mansions rather than summer cottages – behind high walls and ornate but very functional metal gates.