In an interview to Russia Today, besieged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied that war crimes have been committed by his government forces and instead said he is fighting against “terrorism”.

When questioned about accusations of war crimes, Assad responded by saying,

"if you have an army that committed a crime against its own people, this is devoid of logic because the Syrian Army is made up of Syrian people… the army cannot withstand for twenty months in these difficult circumstances without having the embrace of the public in Syria,"

The President instead accused Syrian rebels of committing war crimes, pointing to reports from both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

"My enemy is terrorism and instability in Syria. This is our enemy in Syria... It is about terrorism and the support coming from abroad to terrorists to destabilize Syria. This is our war."

Assad went on to say that if it wasn’t for foreign support for the rebels, the war would have been finished within weeks, stating,

"When you fight this kind of terrorists, you have to be aware that you should do the minimum damage to the infrastructure and minimum damage to the civilians,"

"You do not expect a small country like Syria to defeat all those countries that have been fighting us through proxies just in days or weeks".

See the full transcript of the interview here.