Washington has repeatedly tried to overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad, Dolgov said, referring to the White House's permanent efforts to undermine Assad's government from within.
"For example, when Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem visited Qatar, its authorities offered him millions of dollars to declare that he was switching sides and joining the opposition. So there were quite a few coup attempts, but they all failed," Dolgov said.
In his opinion, one should give kudos to Syria’s authorities, not least President Assad himself.
"The majority of Syrians see Assad as a national leader. They know full well that a possible alternative to the Assad regime is chaos in their country, the enlargement of Daesh, the split-up of Syria and the end of its statehood," Dolgov pointed out.
Earlier, The Wall Street Journal quoted current and former US and Arab officials and diplomats as saying that Washington maintained communications with senior officials in Syria for years, trying to find a way to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
A former senior administration official told The Wall Street Journal that the White House was "offering incentives for people to abandon Assad," but by the summer of 2012 this strategy of orchestrating a regime change in Syria had failed.
