FT: Putin asked Assad to leave / Vahid Salemi / AP

A few weeks before his death, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Colonel General Igor Sergun, visited Damascus on a delicate mission: the Kremlin offered Syrian President Assad to leave his post. This was reported by the Financial Times, citing two high-ranking Western intelligence officials. The FT's request to the Russian Foreign Ministry was forwarded to the Defense Ministry, which was unable to provide comments.

Bashar al-Assad "indignantly" rejected Sergun's proposal, the FT writes, but the very fact of it added optimism to Western intelligence officers at the end of 2015, since such a step by Moscow allows one to hope for "a realistic scenario of transferring power with the preservation of the Alawite regime, but with the involvement of the moderate wing of the opposition in the negotiations." For the United States and its allies in the anti-ISIS coalition, this would mean resolving the "impassable" situation with Assad's departure and would open, in Washington's understanding, the way to easing interfaith tensions in Syria and Iraq, which led to the rise of the Islamic State group, banned in Russia.

The Kremlin has already denied the FT report, saying Moscow had not asked the Syrian president to leave his post. "No, that is not true," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.

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According to one of the FT's sources in the European intelligence services, the tension of the Russian military operation in Syria has reached a natural limit, with Russian President Vladimir Putin "seeing the ugly underside of the Syrian regime" and "finding far more problems than he had bargained for". But with Sergun's mission, Russia "overdid it", the source says: Assad responded that Russia had no future in Syria unless he remained president.

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Doubts are growing in the upper echelons of the Syrian government about Russia's real aims in the country, the paper claims. "Assad's men have begun to understand what 'big brother' can demand from them in exchange for his protection," says an unnamed Damascus businessman. The FT claims that Assad has "cleansed" the political landscape of rivals, recalling the suspicious disappearance of Alawite dissident Abdelaziz al-Kheir, who travelled to Moscow and China in 2012 and was seen by political analysts as a real rival to Assad.

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Discontent with Assad is also growing in Russia, the FT writes, citing a Russian political scientist with expertise in the Middle East who is involved in Russian diplomacy in this area. "It has become clear that Assad's departure is part of a future political solution, the question is about timing," the source says. "After President Putin's meeting with Assad in Moscow last year, he behaved incorrectly, and this is hindering our efforts to achieve a political settlement."

According to the FT, UN politicians do not expect results from the intra-Syrian talks that start in Geneva on January 25.

Igor Sergun died on January 4 at the age of 58. He was appointed head of the GRU on December 26, 2011. "Colleagues and subordinates knew him as a true combat officer, an experienced and competent commander, a man of great courage, a true patriot. They respected him for his professionalism, strength of character, honesty and integrity," Putin's telegram to Sergun's family and friends said.

FT: Putin asked Assad to go