The rapid downfall of Syrian leader Bashar Assad has touched off a new round of delicate geopolitical maneuvering between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

HMEIMIM AIRBASE, SYRIA — The Sukhoi fighter aircraft punched through the clouds, its growl echoing over Russia’s Hmeimim Airbase on Syria’s coast. Abu Zaid, a bearded militant with the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, cocked his ear toward the roar.

The Syrian regime’s collapse came more quickly than the rebels had dreamed — the circumstances were both serendipitous and part of a larger global realignment.

Moscow achieved its goals in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed during his annual press conference and a call-in program on Dec. 19. following the collapse of dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime. Commenting on the fall of Assad's regime for the first time, Putin said Russia invaded Syria to prevent the creation of "a terrorist enclave."

During Vladimir Putin’s year-end press conference on Thursday, NBC journalist Keir Simmons asked him about Russia’s role in Syria. Putin dismissed any suggestion of Russian failure, asserting that Moscow had achieved its objectives there and that the groups opposing Bashar al-Assad’s regime had “undergone internal changes.

Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

In his first comments on Assad’s downfall, Putin said that he hadn’t yet met the former Syrian ruler, whom he has given asylum in Moscow, but plans to.

Rebel forces in Syria captured the capital Damascus and toppled the regime ... Bashar al-Assad and his family are now in Moscow, Russian state-owned news agency TASS is reporting, citing a source in the Kremlin. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attends ...

The sudden collapse of the long-established Assad family dictatorship in Syria changes the balance and constellation of competing forces in the Middle East. For many years, the Syrian government has been a client of Russia, and before that the Soviet Union. Turkey has also intervened, mainly in pursuit of the Kurd minority regarded as dangerous.

Bashar al-Assad’s central bank airlifted around $250mn in cash to Moscow in a two-year period when the then-Syrian dictator was indebted to the Kremlin for military support and his relatives were secretly buying assets in Russia.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Russia on Sunday after rebels seized control of Damascus, Russian state media said—a pivotal moment in the years-long civil war against the regime that has controlled Syria since the 1970s.

Bashar al-Assad was branded the "rat of Damascus" after fleeing to Moscow as his brutal regime collapsed. Foreign Secretary David Lammy slammed Assad as a “monster” as the horrors of his prisons, where thousands of political inmates were locked up, tortured, and killed, were emerging.