'When Syria falls...': Why Baba Vanga's 2025 prophecies shouldn't be taken lightly

Nearly half a decade later, a surprise offensive in the Western countryside of Syria has shaken up the country. On November 27, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an armed Syrian opposition group managed to capture Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, in a span of less than 24 hours. This might signal the end of a 50-year rule of the Assad family, that transformed Syria into a dynastic dictatorship. As per an official source in Russia, “In the face of an astonishingly swift rebel offensive, President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Moscow and were granted political asylum.”

This is the first major uprising since early 2020 when the regime displaced nearly a million people into Idlib from other parts of the province and Hama province in its attack against the Syrian rebels.Following their surprise offensive, rebels from the opposition HTS group have declared the “end of the era” as they push deeper into Damascus, capturing Sednaya Prison, a notorious symbol of Assad’s regime. Visuals from the Sednaya prison, a prison infamous for torture under Assad’s regimeshowed dozens of men, women and children being freed from captivity. Upwards of 100,000 people are said to have been disappeared into Syria's prisons during nearly the civil war in the country.

However, tensions have emerged across the world with regards to the prophecy of Baba Vanga, the well-known Bulgarian clairvoyant. Vanga, who is also commonly referred to as the “Nostradamus of the Balkans”, is attributed with the successful predictions of the Chernobyl and Kursk submarine disasters. Amongst her other predictions, her prophecy also mentions about Syria and states: “When Syria falls, a great war between the West and the East will follow. In the spring, a conflict will ignite in the East, leading to a Third World War—a war that will destroy the West.”

The ongoing conflict in Syria is widely described as a series of overlapping wars between the regional and world powers, primarily involving the countries of the United States, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Vanga’s prediction, which ties the fate of Syria to an impending global crisis, has alarmed many observers, particularly as the country’s ongoing unrest continues to spiral.With tense situations exacerbated by conflicts in Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine, the threat of a Third World War is lingering at the hands of major global powers.

As Assad’s regime collapses, Syria’s unrest could spill over into neighbouring regions, risking wider conflict. Another extract from Vanga’s prophecy states: “Syria will fall at the feet of the winner, but the winner will not be the one”, thereby highlighting the risk of a conflict whose bigger picture continues to be drawn.