Updated 6:03 p.m. Moscow Time
MOSCOW, October 8 (RIA Novosti) - UN and Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will visit Moscow for consultations on the settlement of the Syrian crisis by the end of October, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Wednesday.
"He [de Mistura] is currently preparing to visit us in Moscow for consultations," Bogdanov said in an interview with RIA Novosti, adding that the diplomat's visit is expected by the end of October.
"We are ready to cooperate with him. We expect that his experience will help to find a path toward soonest political settlement," he said.
The deputy foreign minister noted that Russia has always urged a peaceful settlement of all conflicts via dialogue that takes into account the interests of the people living in the country and considers interventionism in any form inadmissible.
Anti-government protests broke out in Syria in March 2011 and sparked an increasingly bloody civil war in the country. According to UN estimates, the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 191,000 people over a three-year period, forcing almost three million Syrians to flee the country.
Syria is also suffering from the advance of the Islamic State (IS), an extremist group that has been fighting against the country's government since 2012. Following the launch of attacks in Iraq in June 2014, the IS announced a caliphate on the territories under its control both in Syria and Iraq.
The Syrian city of Kobani has been besieged by IS militants for three weeks. The US-led anti-IS coalition has conducted airstrikes on IS positions, but the siege of the city continues.
