LONDON, October 23. /Corr. Maxim Ryzhkov/. The U.S. and its allies are unable to find the opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, which would not be linked to terrorism. This was stated by President’s press Secretary Dmitry Peskov in an interview with the British broadcasting Corporation BBC, excerpts of which were published on 23 October.
“Unfortunately, our partners are unable until now to find a serious opposition, which has no ties to terror, no ties to extremist organizations, no ties with the “Islamic state” (banned in Russia), with “al-Qaeda” and others,” he said.
There is hope that the Syrian army will conquer the terrorists their land, also said Sands. “The American-led coalition has carried out its bombing more than a year, and the result… is that two thirds of Syrian territory, occupied “Islamic state”. And, unfortunately, the situation has a tendency to deteriorate”, he said.
Therefore, Peskov explained, Russian armed forces and began to support government forces in Damascus. “Now early to speak about concrete results, but we see the first signs of a successful offensive by the Syrian army, and so there is some hope that they will be able to conquer the meter by meter, mile after mile – the ground of terrorists and gangs of extremists”, – concluded the press-Secretary of the head of the Russian state.
Peskov also said that it is impossible to provide genuine aid to Syria without having dialogue with its legitimate authorities.
“You can’t deal with Syria, you can’t try to save the country, you can’t think of a future political settlement, without having dialogue with the legitimate government of Syria, the legitimate President of Syria,” – he said, answering the question about the purpose of a recent meeting in Moscow of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.
Speaking on Friday at the quadripartite meeting on Syria in Vienna, which was attended by the Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of state John Kerry and foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Turkey Adel al-Jubayr, and Feridun sinirlioğlu, Peskov said that the establishment of channels for exchange of information and coordination of actions between Russia and those countries that are fighting terrorism in Syria is “the main objective of the efforts undertaken by the Russian Federation, the Russian President and the Russian Minister of foreign Affairs”. “We insisted, to ensure the exchange of information with America and other countries carrying out air strikes,” said Sands.
At the moment, according to him, such an exchange “is happening in military-technical sphere”. “Of course, he continued the press Secretary of the Russian President, we would prefer that the exchange of information were of a more General nature”.
Russia, Peskov said, would prefer that there was an exchange of information relevant to those purposes, which should be strikes. “We asked our colleagues to share with us information about these goals, these coordinates to be sure that strikes on the positions of terrorists. Unfortunately, our partners refuse to share this information with us,” he said.
According to Peskov, only after defeating terrorism, one may wonder about the true political settlement in Syria.
“Only after we defeated the terrorists, we can reflect on the true political settlement, but at the moment it is impossible to achieve,” he said in an interview.
It is impossible to achieve victory over the international terrorist organization “Islamic state” without a successful ground operation, which holds the Syrian army spokesperson said.
According to him, whatever was done in Syria Paris, London, Washington or Moscow, “it will not bring significant results without a ground operation”.
The behavior of the North Atlantic Alliance at the present time is unpredictable, said the press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation.
“This is, unfortunately, a completely mutual feeling, and it forces us to take some measures to ensure our security in the face of very unpredictable behaviour of NATO,” he said, responding to a remark leading Stephen Sackur, which boiled down to the fact that the Alliance considers Russia as a threat.
“Personally, I, – Peskov added, – I never thought that my children will hear the same rhetoric coming from NATO, what I heard in the 1970-ies. Unfortunately, it happened. We are very sorry that it happened, but we were not the country that has blocked all contacts between Moscow and NATO, we were not the country that decided to freeze all dialogue, all cooperation between Washington and Moscow and between London and Moscow, and we started a dialogue in the language of sanctions.”
Press Secretary of the Russian President also denied the information about the civilian casualties that emerged allegedly as a result of the blows the Russian aerospace defence forces on militant positions in Syria. “Yes, at the moment, I categorically deny the responsibility of the Russian armed forces,” Peskov said in response to the request to comment on the media video footage which allegedly depicted the victims of Russian military operations.
“We have seen a large number of reports without any evidence, without specifying Syrian sources, which is why we cannot rely on this information and advise you not to rely on it,” he said.
Peskov urged to carefully treat such rollers. “If you look closely at the video, you will see a man standing on the rubble and says something. These fragments can be in Yemen or anywhere in the world,” he said. “You have to be very careful, because the Internet and the information space covers a large amount of worthless information”, – said the press Secretary of the Russian President in an interview, which was conducted in English. “In the current information war, please be very careful in making judgments on the basis of these unreliable sources,” he called.
Full interview Peskov, the BBC Hard Talk programme will be shown on Monday.
