The Kremlin denied a claim by a senior negotiator Wednesday that Russia had offered in 2012 to make Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down in an "elegant way", saying it never called for regime change.

The Kremlin denied a claim by a senior negotiator Wednesday that Russia had offered in 2012 to make Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down in an "elegant way", saying it never called for regime change.

"I can only once more repeat that Russia is not involved in changing regimes. Suggesting that someone step aside -- elegantly or not -- is something Russia has never done," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, quoted by TASS state news agency.

Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari told British daily The Guardian in comments confirmed to AFP that Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, met with him privately in 2012 and suggested finding "an elegant way for Assad to step aside".

Peskov dismissed the claim, saying that "it's very easy to trace chronologically that from the start of the Syrian crisis, Russia repeated at many different levels that only the Syrian people can determine its future, only through democratic elections."

A representative from Ahtisaari's Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a conflict resolution consultancy in Helsinki, confirmed to AFP that the ex-president had spoken to Churkin about Syria and that the Russian diplomat had detailed his three-point plan.