MOSCOW — Moscow has set no artificial deadlines for the withdrawal of its troops from Syria as this process depends on the situation on the ground, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the UK’s Channel 4 on Friday.

“We don’t like artificial deadlines,” Lavrov said. “We have been consistently reducing our military presence in Syria. And the last reduction took place a few days ago and President Vladimir Putin mentioned about this that about more than one thousand troops have returned to Russia, and some aircraft and other equipment. So, withdrawal of the Russian taskforce depends on what is the actual situation on the ground.”

According to the top diplomat, Russia and the Syrian army implement their plans to create a caliphate.

“But some remnants of Islamic State (a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia) are still there, Jabhat al Nusra is still there. They are now preventing the deal on Syria’s southern de-escalation area to be implemented fully,” Lavrov said. “So, there are some leftovers and, besides, we do not have actually a full-fledged bases, but we have two places where our naval ships and aircraft are allocated in Syria and they might be usefully kept for quite some time.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin last Thursday said Russia had withdrawn 13 warplanes, 14 helicopters and 1,140 troops from Syria in the past few days alone.TASS