Syria's Assad says West wants to weaken Russia
Syrian President Bashar Assad has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia by turning Ukraine into a puppet state, a tactic he said had also been used against his own country.
"I keep coming back to the fact that there is a connection between the Syrian crisis and what is happening in Ukraine," he told Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview, excerpts of which were published on Friday. "Firstly because both countries are important for Russia, and secondly because the goal in both cases is to weaken Russia and create a puppet state."
