Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insists ‘the Russians never try to dictate to us’
Syrian president said the involvement of foreign powers such as Britain, the United States and France was prolonging the country’s civil war
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that military ally Russia was making decisions for him, but said it was natural for there to be differences of opinion between allies, in an interview published on Sunday by state media.
In an interview with British newspaper The Mail on Sunday, carried in full by Syrian state news agency SANA, Assad was responding to a question about whether Moscow now controls Syria’s diplomatic and military moves.
“They [the Russians] never, during our relation, try to dictate, even if there are differences,” he said, according to SANA’s transcript of the interview, given in English.
The only decision about what’s going on in Syria and what’s going to happen, it’s a Syrian decision
“It’s natural to have differences between the different parties, whether within our government or other governments; Russia-Syria, Syria-Iran, Iran-Russia, and within these governments, that’s very natural, but at the end the only decision about what’s going on in Syria and what’s going to happen, it’s a Syrian decision.”
Iranian and Russian support has been critical to Assad’s war effort, but the different agendas of Assad’s allies in Syria have become more apparent of late as Israel presses Russia to make sure Iran and its allies do not entrench their military sway in the country.
On Tuesday, it was reported that a Russian troop deployment in Syria near the Lebanese border had caused friction with Iran-backed forces, in what appeared to be a rare case of Russia acting out of sync with Assad’s Iran-backed allies.
Recent Russian calls for all non-Syrian forces to leave southern Syria have been seen as aimed partly at Iran, in addition to US forces based in the Tanf area at the Syrian-Iraqi border.
