The Kremlin on Friday rejected a media report that an envoy for Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down last year, the Tass news agency reported.
"No, it's not so," Tass quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
The Financial Times had earlier reported that the head of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency travelled to Damascus at the end of last year to ask Assad to step down only to be angrily rebuffed.