To talk about an entire region demilitarized, it will be difficult, because if there is any kind of chaos, who will protect it? If this demilitarized zone was used by some parties as a launching pad for hitting Israel, who is going to be responsible for that?

And at the end of the day, this is Syrian territory, and Syria should have the freedom of dealing with their own territory.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in order to protect Israel, and now they are imposing conditions in the south of Syria in order to protect the Golan Heights.

So after a few years, maybe they will occupy the center of Syria in order to protect the south of Syria.

They will reach Munich on that pathway.

We were in war against Russia for 10 years, and it was a hard, difficult war. They announced that they killed me several times.

We need Russia because it’s a permanent member of the [U.N.] Security Council. We need their vote to be on our side in some issues, and we have strategic interests with them.

We don’t want to push Russia to take alternative or other options in dealing with Syria.

The issue of Bashar al-Assad is troublesome for Russia, and our relationship with them — we’re still in the beginning.

We will preserve our rights as Syrians to call for bringing Assad to justice.