What Agreed Hollande with Obama and Putin?

• 11.27.2015, 19:20
•  Near East,  World

The main result of yesterday’s meeting between French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin was the decision, according to which strikes should not be directed towards those groups who are fighting against terrorists. "It is important for the coalition to assist those groups who are fighting against "Islamic state," the president said, stressing that attacks should be aimed at other positions of the "Islamic state" and jihadist groups. Putin, confirming Hollande's words, said that Russia is ready to support a number of rebel groups in Syria, but the Syrian army and Syrian President Bashar Assad remain Russia's main allies in the fight against terrorists.

It should be noted that Hollande arrived in Russia on a mission to unify efforts in the fight against IS. Before that, on November 24, the French President was in Washington for talks on the issue with the US President Barack Obama. However, as seen by Obama's statement after the talks, Hollande failed on this attempt. In particular, Obama ruled out the cooperation with Russia as long as Moscow continues to support Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Syria's future and the role of Assad are the issues around which there are key differences between Moscow and the West and this has currently become the major obstacle to form a wide coalition against terrorism and to fight more effectively. The Kremlin, in contrast to the West, believes that Assad's fate should be decided by the Syrian people.

As for the Russian side opinion concerning the idea of a broad coalition proposed by Paris, Russian President Putin noted after the meeting with Hollande that he was ready to cooperate with the US-led coalition. "We respect the ruling coalition, led by the Americans, and we are ready to cooperate with it," Putin told in a news conference. Putin emphasized that "incidents like the Russian citizen and military aircraft destruction, pilots and marines were absolutely unacceptable" and that in case of any recurrence of such incidents Russia will not need to corporate with a coalition. In fact, one of the main topics of Putin-Hollande meeting was "Russian Su-24" destruction by the Turkish air force.

Experts believe that this very incident will make  the cooperation with the US-led coalition impossible in the near future.