Late military intelligence chief Igor Sergun is reported to have visited Damascus last year, where he was rebuffed by Syrian president

A Kremlin spokesman has denied reports that Vladimir Putin sent a senior intelligence official to Damascus late last year to ask the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down.

A report in the Financial Times quoted western intelligence sources detailing the apparent mission of Colonel-General Igor Sergun to Damascus. According to the newspaper report, Sergun delivered a message from Putin that it was time for Assad to stand down, but was firmly rebuffed by the Syrian leader.

“No, that is not the case,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, when asked about the mission, Russian news agencies reported.

Moscow entered the Syrian conflict in late September, providing air support for Assad’s army. For a number of years the main sticking point over Syria between Russia and the west has been Moscow’s insistence that Assad is the legitimate ruler of the country and must play a part in any settlement, while the west has seen Assad as part of the problem rather than the solution.

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However, while Russia has not publicly ditched Assad, there have been some signals for a number of months that Moscow could be softening its position on the fate of the Syrian leader, if the Kremlin felt he could be replaced with someone acceptable to Moscow’s interests.

In November, Alexander Aksenyonok, a former Soviet ambassador to Syria, who is still involved in political negotiations in the country, told the Guardian that it was unlikely Assad would be able to stay on.

“If Assad really thinks he can continue the fight against terror without starting the political process, he’s making a big mistake,” he said. “The processes should happen in parallel. Of course, Syria will never be the same as it was, and the leadership will never be the same as it was.”

Little is known about Sergun’s apparent mission to Damascus, or indeed about Sergun’s biography at all. Head of GRU, the highly secretive military intelligence agency, he died on 3 January, just weeks after the mission to Assad.

A source told the Russian agency LifeNews: “One of the reasons for his death was exhaustion – overwork, lack of sleep and all the accompanying ‘symptoms’ of his position.”