Fighting the terrorists in Syria is not only in the interest of Syria or the Syrian people; in the interest of the Middle East, of Europe itself - something that many officials in the West don't see or don't realize or don't acknowledge - and in the interest of the Russian people, because they have been facing terrorists for decades now.

When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don't have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That's the question.

We're talking about the responsibility, my responsibility according to the Syrian constitution that said we have to defend ourselves.

It is not my democracy as a person; it is our democracy as a society.

From our side, from our part as government, we have two missions: the first one is to fight those terrorists to liberate that area [eastern part of Aleppo] and the civilians from those terrorists, and at the same time to try to find a solution to evacuate that area from those terrorists if they accept, let's say, what you call it reconciliation option, in which they either give up their armaments for amnesty, or they leave that area.

No doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?

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.