Speaking to Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda, Assad said Aleppo was effectively no longer Syria’s industrial capital but taking back the city would provide important political and strategic gains for his regime. “It’s going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now,” Assad said. Assad also told the Russian newspaper that the country’s civil war had become a conflict between Russia and the west. “What we’ve been seeing recently during the last few weeks, and maybe few months, is something like more than cold war,” Assad said.

Source: The Guardian October 14, 2016 01:09 UTC