#Assad says “active phase” of Syrian war will end this year: Russian state news
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/assad-says-active-phase-syrian-war-will-end-year-russian-state-ne
A former senior Russian official who recently met Bashar al-Assad said the Syrian president told him the “active phase” of the war in #syria will be over this year but that the government would continue to fight “terrorists,” state-run Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported on Monday. “To my question about how military issues were going, this is what Assad said: ’This year the active phase of military action in Syria will be ended. After that we will have to shift to what we have been doing all the time – fighting terrorists’,” Itar-Tass quoted Sergei Stepashin as saying. (Reuters)