Syrian tycoon and former senior Assad regime official Firas Tlass has reported claims from regime insiders of tensions between Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asmaa, which the insiders say are difficult to “patch up.”

Tlass, the son of former Assad regime defence minister Mustafa Tlass, who now lives in exile in Europe, asked in a post on Facebook: “Will the Russians intervene to control things? I don’t know".