Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country is not going to go to war with anyone, and that it would seek to deter any other country that considered an armed conflict with Russia.

"We are not going to fight against anyone. We are going to create conditions so that nobody wants to fight against us," Putin told Russian news agency TASS in an interview published Monday.

"Moreover, our annual expenditures are falling. In contrast, other countries' [military] spending has been rising," he said.

Putin's comments come against a backdrop of rising tensions in Syria between government troops — who are backed by Russia — and Turkish forces and rebel groups in the northwestern Idlib province, which is now the center of a battle for control between opposing sides.

Government forces under President Bashar al-Assad want to wrestle the region, which borders Turkey, back from Syrian rebel groups and Jihadist forces. Idlib is seen as the last major province still largely under rebel control.

Turkey, meanwhile, backs some rebel groups opposed to Assad and does not want to give up control of the border amid fears of being over-run with refugees fleeing the conflict. There are already over three million Syrian refugees in Turkey and the country says it cannot cope.

Tensions between Turkey and its neighbor Syria escalated further last week when 34 Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike carried out by Syrian forces. On Sunday, when Turkey launched a retaliatory operation, called 'Operation Spring Shield,' 19 Syrian soldiers were killed in Turkish drone strikes on Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Sunday.

There are now concerns over how far Russia could get involved in the dispute, which marks another chapter in Syria's nine-year civil war.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart have been communicating regularly over the escalating tensions, with both stressing "how important it is to improve the effectiveness of coordination between the Russian and Turkish defense ministries," the Kremlin noted, of a phone call that took place on Friday.