2 October 2015, 20:40 GMT
"We're not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia. This is not some superpower chessboard contest," Obama said when briefing reporters at the White House on Friday.
President Obama's remarks came on the third day of Russian air strikes on Islamic State positions in Syria. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday that Russian warplanes had carried out 14 sorties in Syria and delivered six strikes against IS targets.
He said the Russian airstrikes involved Su-34, Su-24M, and Su-25 jets and that an IS military operations centered in the Idlib province had been destroyed in the raids.
A Russian Defense Ministry statement said earlier that the warplanes hit a command post and a communications center in the province of Aleppo as well as a militant field camp in Idlib.
The ministry also said a command post in the province of Hama was also completely destroyed.
