Armies are not only for offensives.

From the first day I took the decision as President to defend my country.

In reality, you cannot withstand for five years and more against all those countries, the West, and the Gulf states, the petrodollars, and all this propaganda, the strongest media corporations around the world, if you don't have the support of your own people. That's against the reality.

You have to look at the reality in Syria. Whenever we liberate any city or village from the terrorists, the civilians will go back to the city, while they flee that city when the terrorists attack that area, the opposite. So, they flee, first of all, the war itself; they flee the area under the control of the terrorists, they flee the difficult situation because of the embargo by the West on Syria.

The first thing you have to learn is how to conduct dialogue and how to make it productive.

Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement.

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.