Kremlin:

Russia's stance on Syria’s Assad unchanged

Rasa - The Kremlin says Russia’s position on Syrian President Bashar Assad remains unchanged and his fate is only up to the Syrian people to decide.

News ID: 429240

Date: 26 April 2017 - 21:21

RNA - “With regard to Assad's support, Russia's and President [Vladimir] Putin's position did not change, it is consistent and well-known," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

The remarks came a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with Reuters that Putin had told him, “I'm not an advocate for Assad, I'm not his lawyer'."

Putin 'lawyer of international law'

Peskov said that the Russian president's assertion was not something new and he had already made similar comments.

Putin is “a lawyer… and defender of international law,” and advocates a policy that rules out the inference of third parties in decisions about the future of any country.

"He (Putin) believes that the future of Syria and the Syrian leader may be neither decided in Ankara, nor in Washington, Paris, Berlin nor Moscow. Syria’s self-determination is a matter of the Syrian people,” the Kremlin spokesman added.

The Kremlin spokesman's comments came on the same day as visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said there was no political future for the Syrian president.

Jubeir made the remarks after a meeting on the Syrian crisis with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

Since March 2011, Syria has been gripped by deadly militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, which have long pushed for the ouster of the Damascus government.

‘Impartial probe needed for Idlib attack’

Elsewhere in his remarks, Peskov reacted to comments by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who alleged that the analysis of samples taken from a suspected chemical attack in Syria "bears the signature" of Assad's government.

Ayrault claimed that there was "no doubt about the responsibility" of the Syrian government in the April 4 attack during which sarin gas was used.

Peskov said that Ayrault’s claims could not change Moscow’s insistence on an impartial international probe into the incident as "the only way to find out the truth."

“We believe that it is impossible to draw conclusions on whether who is responsible for the attack without conducting an international investigation," he said.

At least 87 people were killed in the purported gas attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib province.

Damascus denied the accusation of being behind the attack and noted that the incident was a "fabrication" to justify the subsequent US missile strike on Shayrat Airfield in Homs province.

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