Moscow: Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia by turning Ukraine into a puppet state, a tactic he said had also been used against his own country.

“I keep coming back to the fact that there is a connection between the Syrian crisis and what is happening in Ukraine,” he told Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview, excerpts of which were published on Friday.

“Firstly because both countries are important for Russia, and secondly because the goal in both cases is to weaken Russia and create a puppet state.” The US and the European Union (EU) have imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its role in the crisis in Ukraine.

Russia, a long-standing ally of Al Assad, denies sending troops and weapons to support separatists fighting government forces in east Ukraine and says Western powers helped orchestrate the overthrow of a Moscow-backed Ukrainian president last year.

Asked about a second round of meetings between the rival Syrian sides in Moscow on April 6-9, which Al Assad will not attend, the president said those taking part should not lose sight of the main goal, restoring peace.

Little progress was made at the first round of meetings in Moscow in January. Many Syrian opposition figures shunned the January talks, saying they would appear only at meetings that led to Al Assad’s removal from power.

Al Assad also said Syria is open to dialogue with US in an interview with US television network CBS on Thursday.

He said such dialogue would need to be based on “mutual respect,” but that so far there has been no contact from the Americans.

“But as principal, in Syria, we could say that every dialogue is a positive thing,” he told television journalist Charlie Rose, in excerpts of an interview to air Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

When asked about relations between Syria and the US, Al Assad said there was no direct communication.

State Department officials recently said Al Assad will “never” be part of a negotiation to end the Syrian conflict that is now in its fifth year, but that officials from his government could be part of the process.

On March 15, US Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to suggest in a CBS television interview that Washington would have to talk with Al Assad eventually if peace was to be forged.

The suggestion alarmed opposition groups and their backers who hold Al Assad in particular contempt for the conflict.

But State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki later said that Kerry was referring to representatives of the regime, and not Al Assad himself.

The US has long said that it wants a negotiated settlement to end the Syrian war.