Assad’s message following ‘liberation’ of Aleppo

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad released a short video following the fall of the northern city of Aleppo back into the hands of government forces. Below is a transcript of his message:

What happened in Aleppo can be described as follows: time and history are linked, but people don’t remember time, they remember history. And time turns into history when the great events around the world decide to turn time into history.

We say before the birth of our Master Jesus Christ, and after his birth. We say before the revelation to our Master the Prophet of God, and after the revelation. History is not the same before and after these major events. We differentiate the world political situation before the fall of the Soviet Union and after, as well as between the two World Wars, etc.

I think that after the liberation of Aleppo, we will talk about the situation not just in Syria, not just in Ukraine, but in the world being different from before the liberation of Aleppo. Here, time will turn into history. Aleppo turned time into history; the people of Aleppo by their resistance, the Syrian Arab Army by its courage and sacrifices, and all the Syrian citizens who stood by Aleppo, their country and homeland, all those that stood by truth.

History itself is being drawn, bigger than all the congratulations that we could address, people are glad all over the world, and this happiness and these congratulations are all around the social networks. I will not repeat these congratulations, but stress that what happens is the book of history, being written by every Syrian. This book is not written from today, but has been written over the six years, when the crisis and war began in Syria.