Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the West is fuelling the devastating war in his country, now in its eighth year, with the aim of toppling him.
Assad told The Mail on Sunday in an interview that Western nations have lied about chemical attacks in Syria and supported terrorists groups there, while Russia has supported his government against the foreign "invasion".
Assad reiterated his long-held position that the uprising against his rule was part of a plot to remove a leader that did not go along with Western policies in the region.
Syria is allied with Iran and Russia, and has had turbulent relations with the West. Syria is technically at war with Israel, which occupies the Syrian Golan Heights, but a ceasefire has largely held since the 1970s.
"The whole approach toward Syria in the West is, 'we have to change this government; we have to demonise this president, because they don't suit our policies anymore,"' Assad said.
"They tell lies, they talk about chemical weapons. They talk about the bad president killing good people, freedom and peaceful demonstrations."
Syria's conflict began in 2011 with peaceful protests against the Assad family's decades-long rule. The government's violent response to the protests, and the eventual rise of an armed insurgency, tipped the country into a civil war that has claimed nearly half a million lives.
Since then, Western nations and independent experts have accused the government of carrying out several chemical weapons attacks, most recently in April. The government has denied ever using chemical weapons.
Assad said he has remained in office through more than seven years of war because he has "public support".
"We are fighting the terrorists, and those terrorists are supported by the British government, the French government, the Americans and their puppets whether in Europe or in our region," he said.
"We are fighting them, and we have public support in Syria to fight those terrorists. That's why we are advancing. We cannot make these advances just because we have Russian and Iranian support."
In recent weeks, the Syrian government and its allies have made considerable military gains, including bringing the entire capital and its suburbs under full government control for the first time since the war began.
Some areas in the north are controlled by the Turkish military and its Syrian allies and others in the northeast are run by US-backed Syrian forces. Rebel fighters remain in control of most of Idlib province in the northwest and parts of southern Syria.
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