“For now, everything is running up against the opposition’s obsession with toppling Bashar Assad’s regime,” Mr Lavrov said at his traditional start-of-year news conference.

“As long as this irreconcilable position remains in place, nothing good can happen. Armed actions will continue and people will die.”

He said that the opposition’s insistence on ousting Mr Assad was stymying efforts to find a diplomatic solution backed by the former international peace envoy Kofi Annan and his successor Lakhdar Brahimi.

Lavrov took particular aim at the Syria National Coalition – a broad-based group backed by the West founded in Doha last year – for seeking the toppling of Assad as one of its fundamental aims.