MOSCOW >> Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia had not been defeated in Syria and that Moscow had made proposals to the new rulers in Damascus to maintain Russia’s military bases there.

In his first public comments on the subject, Putin said he had not yet met former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad since was overthrown and forced to flee to Moscow earlier this month, but that he planned to do so.

In response to a question on the subject from a U.S. journalist, Putin said he would ask Assad about the fate of U.S. reporter Austin Tice, who is missing in Syria, and was ready to ask Syria’s new rulers about Tice’s whereabouts too.

“I will tell you frankly, I have not yet seen President Assad since he came to Moscow. But I plan to do so. I will definitely talk to him,” said Putin.

He said most people in Syria with whom Russia had been in contact about the future of its two main military bases in Syria were supportive of them staying, but that talks were ongoing.

Russia, which intervened in Syria in 2015 and turned the tide of the civil war there in Assad’s favour, had also told other countries that they could use its airbase and naval base to bring in humanitarian aid for Syria, he said.

“You want to portray everything that is happening in Syria as some kind of failure, a defeat for Russia. I assure you, it is not. And I’ll tell you why. We came to Syria 10 years ago to prevent a terrorist enclave from being created there,” said Putin.

“On the whole, we have achieved our goal. It is not for nothing that today many European countries and the United States want to establish relations with them (Syria’s new rulers). If they are terrorist organisations, why are you (the West) going there? So that means they have changed.”