Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzya called on Tuesday to lift the existing international sanctions on Syria.
"Sanctions must be lifted because, as we've always said, they affect the ordinary people," Nebenzya told the UN Security Council members during a meeting on Syria.
The EU should review its economic sanctions against Syria to facilitate the country's reconstruction, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.
"We should reconsider our sectoral sanctions [against Syria] to facilitate reconstruction and, here again, to do so we need to see real progress towards an inclusive political process," von der Leyen said in Strasbourg.