In an interview with TV station ONT, Bashar al-Assad has called on Belarusians not to yield to ‘present-day Nazism in the form of Western occupation’.
The interview will be broadcast on May, 11. On Tuesday, the TV channel published an excerpt of it. Sending Victory Day cogratulations, the Syrian president compared the Belarusian situation to that of Syria:
“Even now the veterans’ example shows fortitude, because you are now going through something like the last decade’s developments in Syria. In fact, you are under siege, there are attempts by to demonize presidents Lukashenka and Putin, because they do not cave in to the West. Your previous generations did not bow to Hitler, and the current generation should not yield to contemporary Nazism in the shape of the Western occupation,” said Assad.
According to the recent military conflicts report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the war in Syria remains the deadliest conflict in the world. Bashar al-Assad uses chemical weapons against civilians. According to the NGO Syrian Center for Political Studies, about 500,000 people were killed, millions were injured.