Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that they shouldn’t ruin their relationship over the deepening crisis in Syria’s Idlib province, as the two leaders started high-stakes talks aimed at patching up ties, EDNews reports citing Bloomberg

“We definitely have to discuss the whole situation that’s developed so far so that A, nothing like this happens again, and B, so that Russia-Turkish ties are not destroyed,” Putin told the Turkish president at the start of their summit in Moscow on Thursday.

He offered condolences to Erdogan over the dozens of deaths suffered by the Turkish military in recent weeks during clashes with Russia-backed Syrian government forces in Idlib. But Syrian forces also sustained “serious losses,” Putin said.

“The world is watching us today,” Erdogan replied, voicing hope that their decisions at the talks will help to ease the crisis.

The two sides are seeking to avert a rupture in their uneasy partnership in Syria, following a Turkish military blitz in Idlib in retaliation for the worst losses of its Syrian campaign. Erdogan wants Putin to accept his plan to carve out a new zone of control in the province to resettle millions of refugees, according to senior officials familiar with Ankara’s policy. That clashes with Putin’s insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must regain control over all of his country’s territory.

Both Russia and Turkey have been careful to avoid direct conflict even as the violence has spiked in recent days. While Russia formally controls the skies above Syria, Turkey unleashed a barrage from killer drones against Assad’s army after an airstrike killed 33 Turkish soldiers in a single day on Feb. 27.