Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said Wednesday he discussed the situation in Syria in a telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and that both leaders were ready to continue political dialogue

Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, is hosting his own talks Wednesday with U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, focusing on the process of finding a political solution in Syria and the steps for starting a dialogue between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

De Mistura and Lavrov were part of international talks last week in Vienna that called for the U.N. to bring together the warring Syrian sides and help them move toward “credible, inclusive, non-sectarian governance” and a new constitution.  The participants, which included the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, also said new elections should take place under U.N. supervision.

Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the fate of President Assad should be decided by the Syrian people and that keeping him in power is not crucial to Russia’s objectives.

“We have never said Assad’s staying in power is a principled aspect” of Russian policy on Syria, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Ekho Moskvy radio.  Instead, she stressed that the preservation of a functioning government in the Syrian state is central to ending more than four years of civil war.

She also warned that regime change in Syria, currently sought by a host of Western nations, could become a “regional catastrophe,” making worse the effects of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 240,000 people and forced millions of people to flee the country since 2011.

Later Tuesday at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest discounted the Russian comments, saying “I have doubts that [they] reflect any sort of change” in what he described as Moscow’s “flawed strategy” in Syria.

Russia has stepped up its military support for the embattled president in the past two months, deploying warplanes to Syria and carrying out airstrikes.

Russian diplomats and military officials contend the air attacks are aimed at Islamic State extremists, but that claim is widely disputed by the U.S. and others, who say the Russians have too often bombed Syrian opposition fighters who have no connection with, or allegiance to, the Islamic State militants.

A U.S.-led coalition is also carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State extremist targets in Syria, and last week President Barack Obama announced the deployment of about 50 U.S. special-forces troops to support and advise local fighters battling Islamic State militants. The White House says American troops in Syria will not directly engage in raids or combat.

The efficacy of the local coalition, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, remains far from clear.  Last month, the Pentagon scrapped a program aimed at training and arming Syrian rebels, after reports surfaced that the force was too small and ineffective to confront the militants.
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