Zelenskyy: Putin will want to take revenge for Assad’s downfall

Zelenskyy: Putin will want to take revenge for Assad’s downfall

"Brave" Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee? This year’s Human Rights Day is accompanied by horrific photographs of Syrian prisons and torture chambers, exposed after Assad’s escape. People were humiliated there for many years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands and thousands of people have gone through this factory of violence," writes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on platform X.

"Assad’s regime survived solely on violence for decades. And such are all the regimes supported by Putin. We saw the same prisons, torture chambers, unspeakable violence, humiliation, beatings, torture, rapes, and other crimes in every settlement occupied by Russian invaders on our territory.

Russia is a prison state that can hold foreign, stolen land only through the prisons and torture chambers it places there.

Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, after the tanks, repression and torture always follow. We first saw this on our land in Crimea in 2014 when the Russian occupation led to the repression of the indigenous people, Ukraine’s largest Muslim community – the Crimean Tatars, as well as journalists and political figures. Then Russia continued its horrific human rights violations in the occupied Donbas, including the notorious "Isolation" prison.

Since February 2022, Russia has spread these practices to all other occupied territories. The atrocities have escalated in scale and brutality.

This is why we, Ukrainians, are so moved when we see Syrians coming out of Assad’s prisons and torture chambers. Assad and Putin are not just vassal and suzerain. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will try to avenge Assad’s downfall.

That is why we need unity and strength to confront regimes that sow only humiliation and leave behind only suffering, pain, and ruins. By helping Ukraine fight against the Russian dictatorship, the international community helps many other regions of the world restore security and achieve protection from violence.

There must be punishment for the horrific atrocities and human rights violations. In fact, only Putin and Assad deserve to be in prison, not those innocent people they have imprisoned for years," Zelenskyy concluded.