A picture shows Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad and his wife in Moscow after the collapse of his regime.
This is not true. The picture is a still from a video of the pair filmed in Aleppo, Syria, in February 2023.
A picture circulating on social media with claims it shows the first picture of Syria’s ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his wife in Moscow, is actually a still from a video showing the pair visiting earthquake victims in Aleppo, Syria, in February 2023.
Syrian rebels seized the capital Damascus unopposed on Sunday 8 December with former President Assad reportedly fleeing to Russia. His deposition follows a 13-year civil war that killed over 500,000 people and more than 50 years of the Assad family's rule.
Using Google Lens Full Fact traced the picture claiming to be the first to show the former president and his wife Asma in Russia to a YouTube video of the pair visiting earthquake victims in 2023. The caption (translated from Arabic by Google) says: “Summary of Bashar al-Assad's visit to those affected by the earthquake in Aleppo!”
The earthquake, which killed over 400 people in the city, and the then-president’s visit, was widely reported on at the time.
Misleading images and videos are a common form of misinformation we see circulating online.
For help spotting this kind of misinformation, see our guides on how to verify pictures and videos yourself.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the picture shows a still of a video showing Bashar al-Assad and his wife visiting earthquake victims in Aleppo, Syria, in February 2023, not in Russia after the fall of Damascus in December 2024.
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