MOSCOW, December 8. /TASS/. The West’s threats to introduce sanctions over Syria speak about its political weakness, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday.

"If politicians try again to threaten us with sanctions, this will be a dead giveaway since it will reveal this group of countries’ total political weakness," the diplomat stressed.

"This is indeed a cowardly announcement about the possibility of new sanctions," Ryabkov concluded. "Apart from irony and verifying that we are right, they give no other signals."

Russia and the United States are close to understanding on Syria’s Aleppo, but Moscow has no overestimated expectations, Ryabkov said.

"We are close to reaching understanding now, but I want to warn against overestimated expectations," the diplomat said.

Russia and the US have recently had an intense exchange of documents on Aleppo, and the situation there is changing every hour. "That’s why there is no point speaking about which version of the text (agreements) is in the field of negotiations now as the text is amended in real-time mode," Ryabkov said. "We did this job late yesterday and continued doing this in the morning."

The diplomat recalled that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a second meeting over the past several days in Germany’s Hamburg on Wednesday. "This shows that the process is intense," he stressed.