Question: So, still, there’s no chance, at this stage, of Russia saying, “President Assad, look. If we want to get peace in Syria, then you have to take yourself out of the equation.” There’s still no question of that happening.

Sergey Lavrov: Absolutely not. You know that we’re not in the regime-change game. We are against interference in domestic conflicts. And this is our position, which should be of no surprise to anyone. This is a point of principle, if you want. A practical point is that he is not going to leave. So we have to take it as a given.And instead of asking ourselves some hypothetical questions – whether he could, or whether he could not, I think if we want to save lives, and I reiterate once again that this is priority number one for Russia, then we should drop any preconditions and tell all those who are fighting, “Guys, we want you to sit down and talk.”