MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. Remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad will be a topic of discussion during the upcoming visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Turkey, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Wednesday.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Moscow relies on public statements made by the Turkish president, while the words concerning Bashar Assad were uttered "off the record."

"We studied the matter yesterday. The quote caused a great stir," Zakharova said. "We tried to understand whether it was quoted as it had been said. It was not a direct quote, but a retelling of what had been said ‘off-the-record’. We rely on the public statements."

"In the context of settling the Syrian crisis and in the context of bilateral relations with Turkey Russia proceeds from the agreements that we have, that were achieved at the official level and in direct contacts with the Turkish leadership," Zakharova recalled. "These are official documents. We regard them as basic ones in the context of the Syrian settlement and in bilateral relations with Ankara. There are not just bilateral agreements, but documents of the International Syria Support Group, to which Turkey is affiliated. Within the framework of those documents there are no doubts the Syrian conflict can have no solution other than a peaceful one; there is no military way of settling the Syrian situation. This is well seen not only in ISSG documents, but also in the UN Security Council resolutions, mandatory for all countries."

"We proceed from the existing agreements and liabilities of countries, and not from quotes that may have been misinterpreted or extracted from the context. It remains to be seen," Zakharova said.