Bashar Al Assad It has been reported that he has been passing the time while in exile by playing video games. His chosen hobby stands in unexpected contrast to his previous public comments about gaming.
Assad, who succeeded his father as Syrian president in 2000, was ousted in December 2024 after rebels took over Damascus. Before his downfall, he survived more than a decade of war with support from Iran and Russia. He faces widely documented accusations of state torture, mass deaths in custody, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, among other war crimes. Regional dynamics remain unstable under the post-Assad order led by President Ahmed al-Shara, with recent reports pointing to new political problems and sectarian tensions as well as a cautious diplomatic reset with neighboring countries.
Assad's Moscow exile routine reportedly included hours of online gaming.
When rebels entered Damascus in December 2024, Assad fled to Moscow, where he was granted political asylum. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved it, according to previous statements by Kremlin officials. Now, a new report from German outlet Die Zeit says the ousted politician is spending his days playing online video games in a luxury high-rise building in the Russian capital. In addition to his hours-long gaming sessions each day, he occasionally visits the shopping mall in the basement of his apartment, the same source said.
Assad once claimed he does not play online games
The report does not go into any further detail about Assad's gaming habits other than that he plays online games. But the implicit existence of such habits already stands in stark contrast to what Assad said nearly two decades ago, when he rejected the notion of gamers in a February 2007 interview with Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer. When asked if he plays anything online, he said he uses the Internet “for information, not for video games,” according to a transcript of the exchange in Engadget.
Assad, now 60, has had ample time over the next 18 years to rethink his stance on the game. In 2024, Russian news agencies reported that his political asylum in Russia had been granted on “humanitarian” grounds. According to a statement by Russian Ambassador to Iraq Elbrus Kutrashev in April 2025, Assad's condition was that he agree to completely cease political activity and media appearances. Given how he has stayed out of the public eye since fleeing Damascus, he appears to have complied with these conditions, which also guarantee asylum to his immediate family.
In the spring of 2025, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said he had asked the Russian government to extradite Assad. The request, presented as a condition for allowing Moscow's presence in Syria, was rejected.
Source: FT, JPost, Engadget, BBC
