President Trump and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin will work together to end the Syrian civil war and stop the suffering in the battle-scarred country, the White House said Tuesday.

The pair spoke by phone in their first known conversation since the US missile strikes on a Syrian air base that sparked new tensions between Washington and Moscow, and the White House said the pair agreed that the suffering in Syria had gone on long enough.

“All parties must do what they can to end the violence,” the pair agreed, according to a White House statement.

The US will send a representative to ongoing peace talks being held in Kazakhstan, the administration said.

Trump and Putin also discussed escalating tensions in North Korea and how the two countries could help defuse the dangerous situation.

And they also said they would try to schedule a meeting this July in Germany.

The early afternoon discussion was focused on Syria’s six-year conflict, which has left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced millions more.

Despite having previously warned against US intervention in Syria, Trump ordered the strikes against Syrian government targets in early April after accusing the regime of using chemical weapons in a deadly attack on civilians.

The US action was accompanied by a dramatic shift in the Trump administration’s rhetoric toward Russia, one of the Syrian government’s most important benefactors.

Trump, who spent months touting the prospect of warmer ties with Putin, declared after the strikes that the relationship between the US and Russia “may be at an all-time low.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley also sharply condemned Moscow’s role in supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Yet Trump has continued to hold out the prospect of a stronger relationship with Russia, which was a cornerstone of his foreign policy platform as a presidential candidate.

He took to Twitter days after the Syria strikes to say that “things will work out fine” between the US and Russia and “everyone will come to their senses.”

Trump and Putin spoke one day before a new round of Russian-led talks on the Syria crisis begins in Kazakhstan.

With AP