A former Russian prime minister who recently met Bashar al-Assad said Monday the Syrian president told him he would not flee like the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

"The Syrian president told me: 'Tell Putin that I am no Yanukovych and that I will not go,'" Sergei Stepashin told reporters in Moscow after meeting the Syrian president last week.

Assad was referring to Moscow-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych who was ousted by a pro-European popular uprising in February and fled to Russia.

"Unlike Yanukovych, he has no enemies in his inner circle... and he certainly knows what he is doing," Stepashin said.

Stepashin, who served a brief stint as prime minister in 1999, said Assad also told him that he expected much of the fighting to be over by the end of this year.

"Within this year the active phase of military action in Syria will be over," Stepashin quoted Assad as saying.

"Afterwards we will be forced to switch to what we've been doing all the time: fighting terrorists and suicide bombers."

Stepashin said he met Assad in one of his residences.

Assad "is in top athletic form," said Stepashin, who heads a charitable organisation called the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian society.

Since the outbreak of a revolt against Assad in March 2011, Russia has provided political, military and financial backing to the Syrian leader's regime.

The war has killed more than 150,000 people and forced nearly half the population to flee their homes.