Putin's Pivot: Out of Ukraine, Into Syria

Source: THE MOSCOW TIMES

"How great is it that our nation is ruled by a man that we can be so proud of?" To be honest, this is a first in my life." This was the praise given to President Vladimir Putin in the wake of his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 28 in the Noviye Izvestia newspaper.
The writer was Alexander Kalyagin, a prominent Russian actor and theater director, and a Soviet screen icon, and he continued: "Every word, every pause, every intonation was in place. Having heard [Putin's words], 'Do you understand what you've done,' I couldn't help but applaud."
Kalyagin's lofty appraisal of Putin's General Assembly address — his first in a decade — was symptomatic of a wider trend — across Russia's cultural and political elite, it was an event that marked Russia as a major player in world affairs once again.

The Russian president sought to reinvent himself as the world's newest peacemaker. While hitting on several familiar chords concerning the conflict in Ukraine, the core of Putin's speech focused on presenting Russia's take on the fight against the Islamic State, and proposed an international coalition with the Syrian government to stop the extremist group's rise. The Islamic State is a terrorist group banned in Russia.
"We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face-to-face," Putin said. "We should finally acknowledge that no one but President [Bashar] Assad's armed forces and [Kurdish] militias are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria."
The remarks were part of a three-front campaign waged by Putin from mid- to late-2015 to divert international and domestic attention away from Ukraine toward Syria, where Russia has the diplomatic clout to make itself useful to the West in the Middle East — thereby giving Moscow leverage to break economic sanctions, as the conventional wisdom goes.
Having been eagerly accepted at home, Putin's pivot met mixed results abroad, where the Kremlin's diplomatic and military push in Syria has seen the regime of its ally Assad spared from imminent collapse, and diplomatic isolation from the West apparently ended — but no concessions on sanctions are in sight.