NEW YORK, December 21. /TASS/. Debra Tice, the mother of US journalist Austin Tice who went missing in Syria 12 years ago, has expressed her enormous gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his pledge to help locate her son.

"I am so enormously grateful that President Putin made a promise in front of the whole world that he would be helping with Austin. And I am just flabbergasted for really that he did that, and I hugely appreciate that," Debra told a TASS reporter. "At this point in time, I feel that no one else is as capable as President Putin to be able to do this, as far as his connections, both with the former president of Syria [Bashar Assad], and then what the ground," she said.

During a "Direct Line" Q&A session combined with his annual press conference on Thursday, Putin clarified that he had not yet met with Assad after his arrival in Moscow but plans to speak with him.

NBC reported that the mother of the missing Austin Tice pleaded with the Russian leader for his help in locating her son in Syria, where he is allegedly being held.