ISIS Threat Pushes Russia To Reconsider Priorities In Syria

MOSCOW — In a strik­ing shift, President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin are embark­ing on a ten­ta­tive path toward clos­er ties and pos­si­ble mil­i­tary coöper­a­tion, as the bit­ter rift over Ukraine gives way to com­mon cause against the Islamic State (ISIS) group.

After weeks of accus­ing Moscow of try­ing to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad by bomb­ing US-backed rebels, Obama changed his tune on Wednesday, prais­ing Putin as a “con­struc­tive part­ner” in a nascent diplo­mat­ic effort to resolve Syria’s civ­il war.

Putin, too, has issued con­cil­ia­to­ry sig­nals, soft­en­ing his tone about the US and call­ing for the US and Russia to “stand togeth­er” against the extrem­ist threat.

Speaking on the side­lines of a sum­mit in the Philippines, Obama even raised the prospect of mil­i­tary coör­di­na­tion with Russia — a pos­si­bil­i­ty that has seemed remote ever since the US cut off mil­i­tary ties last year over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Obama said Russia had been a “con­struc­tive part­ner in Vienna in try­ing to cre­ate a polit­i­cal tran­si­tion,” refer­ring to inter­na­tion­al talks in Austria.

But, he said, there were still dif­fer­ences over the fate of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, and Moscow’s cur­rent mil­i­tary focus on defend­ing him.

“There is obvi­ous­ly a catch, which is Moscow is still inter­est­ed in keep­ing Assad in pow­er,” Obama said.

But he added: “Those dif­fer­ences have not pre­vent­ed us at look­ing at how could we set up a ceasefire.”

Obama also expressed hope that Russia may shift the mil­i­tary focus from defend­ing Assad to attack­ing the Islamic State group.

The Islamic State group has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the October 31 crash that killed 224, and Putin has vowed to hunt down those respon­si­ble and pun­ish them.

“In their ini­tial mil­i­tary incur­sion into Syria, they have been more focused on prop­ping up President Assad,” Obama said.

“If, in fact, he shifts his focus and the focus of his mil­i­tary, to what is the prin­ci­ple threat, which is ISIL, then that is what we want to see,” Obama said using anoth­er acronym for the group.

“We are going to wait and see whether Russia does end up pay­ing more atten­tion to ISIL tar­gets. If it does so, that’s some­thing we welcome.”

For Putin, the ter­ror attacks in Paris marked a water­shed moment in rela­tions with the West.

At a sum­mit this week in Turkey, Putin hud­dled ami­ca­bly with Obama and oth­er Western lead­ers, whose chang­ing atti­tudes reflect­ed the polit­i­cal real­i­ty that the US and its allies need Russia’s help to con­front an extrem­ist threat now strik­ing at the heart of Europe.

In a sign of an emerg­ing Russia-West axis, French President Francois Hollande announced he would trav­el to Washington next week and Moscow two days lat­er to dis­cuss step­ping up coöper­a­tion against ISIS with Obama and Putin.

Forging an alliance with the West to fight ISIS would offer Putin a chance to raise Russia’s glob­al clout and pres­tige and to repair rela­tions that were shat­tered by the Ukraine crisis.

“The West may find it hard to dis­cuss a degree of Russia’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for what hap­pened in Ukraine, or the legit­i­ma­cy of its pres­ence in Syria, at a moment when the ISIS has reached all the way to the Eiffel Tower,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a polit­i­cal strate­gist who used to work for the Kremlin, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Yet, while the Kremlin is clear­ly hope­ful that coöper­a­tion against ISIS will push Ukraine to the side­lines, both the US and Russia have reject­ed any link between Syria and Ukraine.

A White House offi­cial said no mat­ter what hap­pens in Syria, the US won’t lift crip­pling eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Russia until it ful­fills its oblig­a­tions under a Ukraine peace deal reached in February.

Because Obama has sus­pend­ed for­mal US-Russia mil­i­tary ties, coör­di­na­tion in the fight can only go so far — even if Moscow sharp­ens its focus on ISIS.

In recent days the US has seen Russia begin focus­ing some of its strikes on ISIS, but the vast major­i­ty have tar­get­ed mod­er­ate rebels fight­ing Assad, said an offi­cial who was­n’t autho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and request­ed anonymity.

Putin’s high-inten­si­ty air cam­paign makes him a major play­er in the Syrian con­flict, and Russia’s influ­ence over its ally, Assad, gives it a key role in diplo­mat­ic efforts to nego­ti­ate a polit­i­cal solution.

Obama said that for weeks now, Russia has played a help­ful role in talks in Vienna that US Secretary of State John Kerry says could pro­duce a cease­fire with­in weeks.

Though dis­trust­ful of Russia’s gov­ern­ment after years of skir­mish­es, Obama has sought to com­part­men­tal­ize the var­i­ous con­flicts in which the for­mer Cold War foes inevitably cross paths.

Despite its quar­rels over Syria and Ukraine, the US worked with Russia to secure the nuclear deal with Iran, after which Obama thanked Putin for his “impor­tant role” in that for­mu­lat­ing the accord.

Obama’s inter­ac­tions with Putin at the Group of 20 sum­mit this week were notably devoid of the grim-faced exchanges they’ve had in the past. Instead, the two were spot­ted lean­ing in close at a cof­fee table and, in anoth­er run-in, grin­ning broad­ly as they casu­al­ly chatted.

And Putin, who has rarely missed a chance to mock the US, avoid­ed out­right gloat­ing as he spoke to reporters at the meet­ing in Turkey. Instead, he deployed even-man­nered restraint when asked to assess the effi­cien­cy of the US-led coali­tion’s air war against ISIS, which has thus far fall­en woe­ful­ly short of Obama’s goal of defeat­ing the extrem­ist group.

“It’s not the right moment to judge who is bet­ter and who is worse,” Putin said. “Now it’s nec­es­sary to look for­ward and pool efforts to fight the com­mon threat.”

Whether the US and Russia can make good on hopes of coop­er­at­ing in Syria will like­ly hinge on their abil­i­ty to rec­on­cile their dis­agree­ment about Assad’s future. That effort will like­ly be daunting.

While Russia has sought to but­tress Assad, the US and its allies insist he’s lost legit­i­ma­cy and can’t be part of any future Syrian gov­ern­ment. US offi­cials waxed hope­ful that Russia was final­ly com­ing around, point­ing out that Russia signed on to a diplo­mat­ic state­ment in Vienna on Saturday call­ing for a “Syrian-led and Syrian-owned polit­i­cal transition.”

But Putin lat­er said the issue must be decid­ed by the Syrians as part of that process. Assad’s polit­i­cal future, Putin said, is a “sec­ondary issue,” to be decid­ed later.

ISIS threat push­es Russia to recon­sid­er pri­or­i­ties in Syria