Interview: Syria crisis has no military solution: Russian expert

"The crisis has no military solution, only political, as four years of confrontation demonstrated," Veniamin Popov, director of the Center for Civilizations Partnership at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Looking back to the four years after the outbreak of Syria's civil war, Popov noted that the intervention of the West aggravated the situation in the Middle East country.

"The West, the U.S. first of all, started to arm and finance radical opposition. Because of that support, radical opposition in Syria swiftly annexed all other wings of opposition. As a result, the extremist groups have taken the upper hand there," Popov said.

Describing the Syria crisis as an episode of the violent popular uprisings across the region, Popov pointed out that Western countries have not got what they expected in the first place.

"The crisis in Syria was a sort of watershed. The Western countries failed to implement the Libyan scenario there, that is, to oust the ruling regime," he said.

"The crisis initiated the creation of the Islamic State, born and raised on Western short-sighted financial and military support," Popov added.

"The Europeans already reap what they have sown, suffering from Islamist terror attacks in France and Denmark, and this is not the end. The conflicting parties in Syria have been unable to defeat each other," said Popov.

To solve the crisis, Popov maintained, peaceful negotiation is the only way.

"In the 21st century, no ethnic nor religious conflicts could be solved by force, be it in Syria or in Ukraine," he said, pointing out that Russia has hosted intra-Syrian talks in Moscow several times.

"Russian efforts persuaded Syrian opposition to lift their demand for (President Bashar) Assad's unconditional stepping down. Moscow has persuaded the opposition that such a demand has been unrealistic. I expect the next round of talks in Moscow will lead to more tangible results," Popov said.

He also called for more efforts from the international community, saying that the Syria crisis, which has created more refugees than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has become a glaring scare embedded in the stability of Middle East.

"It looks like the West is interested in conflict continuation. The U.S. is not interested in stability there because they do not depend on oil in the Middle East to the degree they used to be in the past when 30 percent of their oil import came from the region." Endi