President Barack Obama disagreed with and discredited claims that Russia's military operations, through the initiative of Vladimir Putin, is now leading the fight in Syria.
"If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in - in order to prop up your only ally - is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership," Obama said during the "60 Minutes" interview with Steve Kroft, according to CBS.
Obama added that the continuous Russian attacks are performed due to weakness.
"Today, rather than being able to count on their support and maintain the base they had in Syria, which they've had for a long time, Mr. Putin now is devoting his own troops, his own military, just to barely hold together by a thread his sole ally," Obama added, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"The fact that they had to do this is not an indication of strength, it's an indication that their strategy did not work."
Highlights, outtakes from Obama's 60 Minutes interview https://t.co/6i3pVKfBHS pic.twitter.com/1giAAkbeFC
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 12, 2015
During the last week of September, Russia started launching airstrikes all over Syria. On Wednesday, Russia added more operations and performed its initial naval bombardment against the enemies of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
"One of the challenges that I've had throughout this heartbreaking situation inside of Syria is, is that you'll have people insist that you know, all you have to do is send in a few, you know, truckloads full of arms and people are ready to fight. And then when you start a train and equip program and it doesn't work, then people say, 'Well, why didn't it work?'" Obama said after a long time of being unable to conquer Assad's regime, CNN reported.
The interview was recorded a few days before the U.S. Department of Defense declared that they will no longer push through with the program in Syria.
