Bashar Al-Assad has criticised Britain’s political leaders for allowing the Brexit vote to take place,Huffington Post has reported. The Syrian president called them “second-class politicians” and claimed that they had proved that they were divorced from reality when they criticised his policy regarding the civil war in his country.

Assad made his comments to Australia’s SBS TV. When asked about the potential consequences of the Brexit vote, he replied that a British government with a different prime minister may have a “new policy that might affect us positively, but I have no hope in this regard.”

Britain and other Western countries accuse Assad and his supporters of committing war crimes in the ongoing civil war in Syria. More than 250,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in 2011. A further 6.6 million are internally displaced while 4.8 million have sought refuge in other countries.

Concerns about the number of Syrian refugees trying to enter Europe — and thus possibly the UK at a later stage — was one of the main reasons cited for the vote in favour of Britain leaving the European Union.

Source: middleeastmonitor.com