Moscow has begun to turn its back on Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime, the London-based Arabic daily A-Sharq al-Awsat reported on Sunday.

According to the report based on Western and Arab sources, primarily in the Gulf, Russia is consolidating its new position based on contacts with Gulf states, in an attempt to halt the economic sanctions with which it has been contending since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis.

Sources in the Syrian opposition said that Russia has evacuated 100 senior officials, including experts and strategists, through the Latakia airport. The sources said these officials including experts who had manned Assad's operations room, and that there was no plan to replace them.

According to the report, personnel at the Russian embassy in Damascus have been limited, with most employees evacuated, even as sources in the Syrian opposition say that the Kremlin has made a decision regarding the provision of equipment and parts for Syrian war planes.

A senior member of the opposition said the emerging situation may enable another international summit on Syria, like the one held in Geneva in 2014. "Both the regime and the national opposition could make use of this situation to reach a principled decision to convene an international conference to bring about a transition government and preserve the state institutions," said the source. "We don't need to repeat what has happened in Iraq, with the destruction of state institutions including the army, and then have to start everything anew without success."

It should be noted that the report comes from a newspaper linked to the Saudi royalty, and which has taken an anti-Assad stance since the beginning of the civil war in Syria. The accuracy of the report is therefore not clear, and must be read with caution.

Nevertheless, over the course of the weekend, reports published in media identified with or supportive of Assad and Hezbollah revealed that the regime and the Islamist organization are undergoing a difficult time, with more ahead.

One of the articles, in fact, emphasized that Assad is now in control of only some 25 percent pf the land, primarily in the heavily populated major cities.