The United States and Russia are planning concrete steps to resolve the Syrian crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, speaking of his conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

He also called on Russia to use its influence on Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to stop the “attack on the opposition and civilians,” Reuters reported.

“We both believe that we have an understanding of the direction we are going in and what needs to be achieved and our teams will meet shortly and we are going to continue to do that in order to bolster the cessation of hostilities and in order to increase our capacity to fight back against al Qaeda, which is Nusra, as well as fight back against ISIL,” Kerry said.