It's the end of Syria - expat in Russia

Georgina Deiratani, a Syrian Christian who has lived in Moscow for over two decades, says she is still in shock at the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad and his escape to Russia.

Georgina Deiratani, a Syrian Christian who has lived in Moscow for over two decades, says she is still in shock at the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad and his escape to Russia.

"Everybody is saying 'congratulations'," said the 37-year-old, one of several thousand Syrians living in the Russian capital. "But for me this is the end of Syria."

She remembers growing up in a country where different communities lived in harmony, but makes no mention of the brutality of the half-century dictatorship of Assad and his father before him.

"We lived well together," said Deiratani, a doctor who moved to Moscow with her Russian mother after the death of her father.