The Russian president also stressed the need for cooperation with a US-led coalition fighting Islamic State jihadists, saying that without cooperation from the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia the intervention was unlikely to work.
Russian efforts "will be synchronised with the actions of the Syrian army on the ground and the actions of our air force will effectively support the offensive operation of the Syrian army," Putin said at a meeting with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Russian forces have struck 112 targets in war-torn Syria since last week launching a bombing campaign that Moscow says is targeting the IS group, Shoigu told Putin in the televised briefing.
"Strikes have hit 112 targets from September 30 until today," Shoigu said. "The intensity of the strikes is increasing."
In a sign that Russia was
ramping up its involvement, Shoigu said that four Russian warships had
hit sites in Syria on Wednesday with cruise missiles.
"In
addition to the air force, four warships of the Caspian flotilla have
been involved," Shoigu said, adding that the warships had carried out 26
cruise missile strikes against 11 targets.
Russia began air strikes in Syria a week ago following a request by long-standing ally President Bashar al-Assad.
Moscow insists it is hitting IS targets but the US and its allies fear that Moscow is aiming to bolster Assad's regime.
Putin
also said that French leader Francois Hollande had suggested a possible
plan to get government forces to combine efforts with the
Western-backed Free Syrian Army, the main moderate opposition group
fighting the Damascus regime.
A
Hollande aide later denied he had said any such thing. "The president
spoke of the necessary presence of the Syrian opposition around a future
negotiating table. The rest is not a French idea," he told reporters in
Strasbourg.
"During my last
visit to Paris, French President Hollande expressed an interesting idea
according to which in his opinion it might be possible to at least to
try to unite the efforts of the government troops of president Assad's
army and the so-called Free Syrian Army," Putin said.
Putin met with Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine in Paris last Friday.
