Asma al-Assad, wife of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is not seeking a divorce, a Kremlin spokesman has said.
Reports in Turkish media had suggested Asma al-Assad wanted to end her marriage and leave Russia, where she and her husband were granted asylum after a rebel coalition overthrew the former president's regime and took control of Damascus, BBC reported.
Asked about the reports in a news conference call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "No, they do not correspond to reality."
He also denied reports that Assad had been confined to Moscow and that his property assets had been frozen.
Reports in Turkish media on Sunday suggested the Assads were living under severe restrictions in the Russian capital, and that the former Syrian first lady had filed for divorce and wanted to return to London.
Assad is a dual Syrian-British national, but the UK foreign secretary has previously said she would not be allowed to return to Britain.
Asma al-Assad, 49, was born in the UK to Syrian parents in 1975 and grew up in Acton, west London.
She moved to Syria in 2000 at the age of 25 and married her husband just months after he succeeded his father as president.
Throughout her 24 years as Syria's first lady, Asma was a subject of curiosity in western media.
A controversial 2011 Vogue profile called her "a rose in the desert" and described her as "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies". The article has since been removed from the Vogue website.
Just one month later, Mrs Assad was criticised for remaining silent while her husband violently repressed pro-democracy campaigners at the start of the Syrian civil war.
In 2016, Asma Assad told Russian state-backed television she had rejected a deal to offer her safe passage out of the war-torn nation in order to stand by her husband.
She announced she was being treated for breast cancer in 2018 and said she had made a full recovery one year later.
She was diagnosed with leukaemia and began treatment for the disease in May this year, the office of then-President Assad announced.
bd-pratidin/GR
