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 estimated to be 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.