Medvedev: Russia will help Syrian people assert sovereignty

Russia will be helping the Syrian people protect the country’s sovereignty, said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

“It is evident that Syria is one of the key issues on the global agenda today. Russia at the request of Syria’s leadership has come to its rescue. Now we are fighting terrorism together. Yet, the country’s fate is still in the hands of the Syrian people. It is the people, not ethnic groups or political forces that must choose how and with which leader to go ahead. We will be helping the Syrian people in asserting sovereignty. We believe in the peaceful future of that ancient land,” the Russian prime minister said in a Facebook post.

In his words, Russia has never changed its stance on the Syrian issue, supporting only legitimate authorities of that country. Addressing the October 20 visit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow, Medvedev said the Syrian leader was as calm and balanced as five years ago. “Before that, I saw the Syrian president during my visit to Damascus in May 2010. Then Syria was quite different a country – peaceful and civilized. I had an opportunity to walk in historical Damascus and communicate with the local residents. It looked like a city where people of various nationalities and religious coexisted peacefully. I talked to Syrians who spoke highly about Russia and the Russian people. I took photos of mosques and churches. It was a modern secular country.  Everything changed in a year. Since 2011, the life of the Syrian people has turned into a nightmare: war, terror, death, destruction of relics and landmarks of universal importance.”