In a New Year interview with the German tabloid newspaper Bild, Vladimir Putin suggested that Russia could be open to granting refuge to Syria’s President Assad. With international talks on a settlement for Syria due to open in Geneva later this month, this is something that could add to the options on the table.  It would be wise, though, to be cautious. The idea of a Russian exile for Assad appears to have been raised not by Putin, but by his German interviewer, in the not unreasonable quest for a news story. And the Russian president’s response can hardly be described as enthusiastic. Putin has always been adept at the political stall, not ruling any proposal tossed to him in or out, and his answer here – it was “premature” to discuss the issue – conforms to that pattern.  Crucially, too, both the question and the answer were devoid of any timeframe – and timing in the matter of Assad’s future is all. The extent to which Russia is committed to keeping Assad and his circle in office has often been exaggerated in western reports. Putin has never, to my knowledge, excluded the possibility of Assad’s eventual departure. What is at issue between western leaders and Russia is not whether, but when.  Related: Putin hints that Russia could grant asylum to Assad  Russia’s priority is – and has always been – to prevent, at all costs, the total collapse of the Syrian state. This is why it launched its military intervention so precipitately last September, fearing that Islamic State forces and anti-Assad rebels together were closing in on Damascus. Russia supports Assad not primarily as a political friend and ally – the chill and condescension in Putin’s demeanour during Assad’s flying visit to Moscow last October should have given the lie to that – but because, in the view of Putin and his advisers, Assad is all that stands between Syria and chaos.  It is true, of course, that Syria is in the grip of a civil war, and large tracts of territory are out of government control. But it is also true that, for all David Cameron’s talk of 70,000 “moderate” rebels in waiting, there is no cohesive political or military force ready to succeed Assad. The western demand that Assad must go and the insistence of anti-Assad rebels that there can be no settlement while Assad remains are both utterly unrealistic, as long as there is nothing and no one to replace him.  Russia’s nightmare is that what happened in Iraq and Libya, with regimes forcibly changed without great thought for the morrow, will be replicated in Syria. Given the continuing cost of these two interventions, it is hard to understand why this is not the western nightmare, too.  Russia fears, not unreasonably, that if the Syrian state is destroyed, there will be no institutions for a new government to build on, and that conditions will become even worse than they already are – not just for Syrians, but across the region. Russia’s position is that the future of Syria – and of Assad – should be decided in parliamentary elections.  Related: Why the west should listen to Putin on Syria | Simon Jenkins  That stance can be criticised on several counts: that conditions in Syria now, and for the foreseeable future, are hardly conducive to credible elections; that this is a devious Russian plan to assist Assad to a new mandate, and – less convincingly – that the distinction between the future of Assad the individual and the preservation of the Syrian state is somehow spurious.  But it is in the context of the coming talks that Putin’s non-dismissal of a Russian exile for Assad is best seen. It is an option that could be seen as one straw, among many, now in the wind.  Putin told Bild, perhaps slightly tongue in cheek, that Assad would be a less problematical refugee for Russia than Edward Snowden, and that is true; the US would be unlikely to object. On the other hand, Russia has not exactly welcomed other people’s rejected leaders with open arms. Moscow denied that it ever offered sanctuary to Saddam Hussein (though it is believed to have tried to broker a deal with one or more of the Gulf states).  There is also the question of whether the partly British-educated Assad would see Russia – even the clement climes of, say, Sochi – as an acceptable destination. Then again, in the fullness of time, he may have little choice.
The problem of who would succeed Syria remains a huge one, but this idea raised by a German journalist is worth including in the upcoming talks