Bashar al-Assad Subscribes to their exile to play video games. His choice of hobby puts up an unexpected contrast with his previous public comments about games.
Assad, who succeeded his father as president in Syria in 2000, was pulled out in December 2024 after a rebel offensive seized Damascus. Before his case, he had survived more than a decade of war with the support of Iran and Russia. He is facing generally documented allegations of state torture, mass deaths in detention and blur attacks against civilians, including war crimes. Regional dynamics remain concerned under the order after Assad, led by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, with the latest reports pointing to renewed political issues and sectarian tension, as well as cautious diplomatic restorations with neighbors.
Assads Moscow -exile routine is reportedly containing hours of online gaming
When the rebel troops entered Damascus in December 2024, Assad fled to Moscow, where he was granted political asylum – as the Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved, according to previous statements from the Kremlin officials. Now a new report from the German outlet Die Zeit says that the returned politicians spend their days playing online games in a luxurious high -rise building in the Russian capital. In addition to his gaming sessions, which are said to go for hours every day, he sometimes visits a shopping center that is under his apartment, according to the same source.
Assad once claimed that he's not playing online gaming
In addition to playing online games, the report does not go into further details about Assad's gaming habits. But the implied presence of such habits is already in sharp contrast to what Assad said almost two decades ago, when he rejected the perception of being a player during an interview in February 2007 with Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer. When asked if he plays something online, he replied by saying that he uses the Internet “for information, not for video games”, according to an Engadget transcript of the exchange.
The now-60-year-old Assad had plenty of time to rethink his attitude to games during the 18 years that followed. His political asylum in Russia was given on “humanitarian” grounds, reported the Russian news agencies in 2024. According to a statement from the Russian ambassador in April 2025 in 2025 from the Russian ambassador to Iraq Elbrus Cutrase, was assaded because he agreed to completely withdraw from political activities. Given how he has been out of the public eye since he fled Damascus, he apparently follows these conditions, which also secured asylum for his closest family.
In the spring of 2025, Syrian President Ahmed Al-Shara said he demanded Assad's extradition from the Russian government. The request, which was presented as a condition for allowing Moscow's military presence in Syria, refused.
Sources: FT, JPost, Engadget, BBC
