The former president of Syria was secretly taken to a hospital for testing and detected with an unknown toxin, causing speculation over the Russian ban.

Russian media reported on October 3 that the former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who is in exile in Moscow, was secretly sent to a highly confidential hospital in the Russian Federation on September 22, where he was found to have been poisoned with an unknown toxin and was critically ill; after 11 days of treatment, he was discharged on October 2, but has not appeared publicly since. The hospital prohibited his brother, former commander of the Republican Guard, Mahir, from visiting, allowing only the Secretary-General of the President's Office, Mansour Azam, to enter, leading to speculation about "family infighting and Russian control." At the same time, France and Ukraine have issued arrest warrants, and the new Syrian regime is seeking global accountability for old cases such as the death of a French journalist in 2012, with the West tacitly allowing it to gain legitimacy by "accounting for Assad"; multiple parties suggest that internal forces within Russia imitate KGB methods to poison, aiming to seize the huge "sleeping assets" reportedly stored by Assad in Russia and Europe, to ease financial pressure under sanctions.

Comments: Foreign media's speculations, such as "Russia poisoning internally to seize assets," seem more like a deduction based on geopolitical imagination. If Russia truly wanted to "seize assets" by poisoning, it could have handled it quietly under the pretext of "sudden illness during exile," without the need to deliberately arrange the unusual situation of "prohibiting the brother from visiting and allowing the secretary-general to visit," which would instead attract attention and contradict the speculation of "controlling the situation"; also, if Assad's assets were in Russia and Europe, Russia could handle them through legal freezing, without needing to risk using "poisoning," which is easily exposed, making the so-called "financial relief motive" seem like a reason fabricated to create conflict.

The repeated mention of "imitating KGB methods to poison" is actually relying on the Western stereotype of Russia being "secretly controlled and ruthless." This kind of expression provides no details or evidence of the methods, but uses labeled associations to lead readers to preassume "Russia as the mastermind," adding "credibility" to unverified rumors, showing a clear bias in public opinion.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1845013249982472/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.