About a dozen Russian warships have been sent to maneuver off the Syrian port of Tartus, where they could also help to evacuate Russians from the coastal areas where many of them live. Any decision to leave would be particularly wrenching for the tens of thousands of Russian-speaking women who met and married Syrian men who were sent to study in the former Soviet Union and who now live across Syria.

At the airport in Moscow, Russian evacuees described a sharp deterioration over the last year. Natalya Yunus said she ran a salon on the outskirts of Damascus until the Free Syrian Army captured her neighborhood, asking, “where could I go with no lights, no water, no money?”

“It was good for me there for a long time, but in the end it was terrifying,” said Ms. Yunus, whose husband remained behind in Syria. “Of course it’s terrifying, it’s a war, what can you do? There are machine guns, planes. And now I’m in a situation with no way out. There is nowhere to go.”

Her daughter, Anzhelika, said she had also left her husband behind.

“We ran,” she said. “How else can you put it?”

Rushana Vildanova, 26, spent the early morning waiting at the airport, waiting for her husband, Ali, who is a shopkeeper, and their 7-year-old daughter. She said Ali’s mother had died when the roof of their house caved in after a bomb exploded in their section of Damascus, and he was badly injured. She said she left Syria at the very beginning of the conflict, and that in recent months, he confided that he wanted to get out.

“I left right when it started, he stayed behind because he never thought it would get this bad,” she said. “At first there were demonstrations, and it all started there.”

Natalya Ivanova was waiting for her daughter, Olga, who has lived in Syria for the last 13 years. “What could she do? She took her daughter and she left, even though her husband had to stay behind,” she said. “And we are happy that she did that, she had to do that, and now she is here with us. If only for the time being.”