Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he broadly supported US plans to try to push forward the Syria peace process.
However, in the same address he signalled he was in no mood to forgive Turkey for shooting down a Russian warplane.
Addressing almost 1,400 reporters in a cavernous hall inside a Moscow conference centre, the Russian leader said he generally backed a US plan to prepare a UN resolution on Syria, even though differences between the two nations remained.
He also implied Russia was not ready to withdraw support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying a new constitution needed to be drawn up and elections held to determine the fate of the conflict-torn country.
"We believe that only the Syrian people can decide who should govern them," Mr Putin told an annual news conference, saying Russia would continue its air strikes in Syria for as long as the Syrian army continued its own military operations.
His comments followed a visit to Moscow by US Secretary of State John Kerry this week and come on the eve of a meeting of world powers in New York to discuss Syria.
Mr Putin used the start of the news conference, a set-piece of Russian political life, to seek to reassure voters over the troubled state of Russia's economy.
Buffeted by Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis, falling oil prices, and a weakening rouble, Russia's economy is forecast to shrink by around 4% this year, its sharpest contraction since the global financial crisis.
"The Russian economy has passed the crisis. At least, the peak of the crisis," he said.
Despite the economic pain, polls show Mr Putin's ratings, which were boosted by his decision to annex Ukraine's Crimea last year and to launch air strikes in Syria, remain at around 85%, not far off their record highs of almost 90% in October.
Answering a question about Ukraine, Mr Putin appeared to confirm the presence of Russian Special Forces in east Ukraine for the first time.
He said he wanted better ties with Ukraine overall.
However, he had no such charitable words for Turkey and made clear he was in no mood to forgive Ankara for shooting down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border on 24 November.
Russia imposed economic sanctions on Turkey in retaliation.
Using salty language, Mr Putin mused that Turkey may have been trying to ingratiate itself with the US by shooting the plane down.
"It is hard for us to reach agreement with the current Turkish leadership, if at all possible," he said, calling the downing of the Russian plane "a hostile act".
"What have they achieved? Maybe, they thought that we would run away from there [Syria]? But Russia is not such a country," he said.
Mr Putin, a former Soviet KGB officer, has ruled Russia as either president or prime minister for 16 years.
He has not yet said whether he intends to stand for a fourth presidential term in 2018. If he did, he could remain in power until 2024.
His annual news conferences are famously long. Last year's encompassed 53 questions, lasting three hours and ten minutes, while Mr Putin set a personal record in 2008 fielding 106 questions over four hours and 40 minutes.
