Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Russia. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov confirmed this. Assad has “taken the decision himself to resign from his position,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier in the day in response to the upheavals in Syria. With this response, the Russians seem to be mainly reinterpreting the facts in a way that suits them better. Follow all developments about the war in the Middle East in this live blog.

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