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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s “regime cannot last” even as Russia’s airstrikes inflame the country’s war, and the U.S. will counter Russian influence in Ukraine, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.

“By taking military action in Syria against moderate group targets, Russia has escalated the civil war,” Carter said in a speech in Madrid on Monday. “This approach is tantamount to pouring gasoline on fire.”

U.S.-Russian tension has increased with Russia’s attacks in areas of Syria where the U.S. says Islamic State doesn’t operate, spurring speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to prop up his ally Assad. Putin and President Barack Obama failed to agree on a common approach to Syria at the United Nations last week.

Russia’s strategy in Syria “is doomed to fail,” Carter said at a news conference with Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes.

Spain, which has a Patriot missile battery in Turkey, is “committed to protecting the Turkish population against attacks coming from Syria,” Morenes said. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday condemned Russia’s violation of Turkish airspace and urged the Kremlin to coordinate its campaign against Islamic State.

On Ukraine, “we will take all necessary steps to deter Russia’s malign destabilizing influence, coercion and aggression,” said Carter, who’s in Europe to attend a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization ministers in Brussels. “At the same time, we will continue to be open to cooperating with Russia where our interests align.”

Carter also pledged “a full and transparent investigation” of the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz that killed at least 22 people. The Pentagon said Saturday it carried out an airstrike near the hospital and that “there may have been collateral damage.”

(Updates with news conference in fourth and sixth paragraphs.)