VLADIVOSTOK (Sputnik) — Russia will "finish off" Daesh despite its unwillingness to surrender, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview Friday.
"Unfortunately, Daesh has not only settled in the Middle East and North Africa, but it also does not want to surrender. But we will definitely finish it off," Lavrov told the Mir television and radio broadcaster.
The Daesh jihadist group had captured wast swaths of territory in Iraq, Syria and Libya. However, the efforts of local governments, Russia and the US-led coalition have inflicted huge losses on the terrorists.
The US-led coalition of 68 nations started to carry out airstrikes against Daesh in Syria and Iraq in 2014, with the strikes in Syria not being authorized by the government of Assad or the UN Security Council.