HEMEIMEEM AIR BASE, Syria — As Russia unleashed waves of warplanes Thursday from this air base in western Syria to pound terrorist targets, President Vladimir Putin pushed diplomatic efforts with the West, stressing the need “to consider each other as allies in a common fight.”
Russia put its military muscle on display, bringing Moscow-based reporters to view a day’s worth of fighter jets roaring off a runway in dozens of sorties as helicopter gunships patrolled the edges of the sprawling facility.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Friday in Vienna, joined by their counterparts from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, both staunch critics of President Bashar Assad.
Lavrov said he wanted to provide “firsthand information” about the Russian air campaign against Islamic State terrorists in Syria, but also talk about a future political process in the country that is now in its fifth year of civil war.
The U.S. and other Western powers have questioned Russia’s primary motive in the airstrikes, which began Sept. 30, and have backed up a Syrian government offensive in central and northwestern regions. Moscow says it is fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist groups such as the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, but the U.S. and others say the intervention is to prop up Assad and is likely to fan the violence.
The intervention is also allowing Russia to portray itself as a major global player, projecting its military power far from its borders.
Assad met Tuesday with Putin in a surprise visit to Moscow to discuss the military operations. In a speech Thursday at a conference in Russia’s southern resort of Sochi, Putin said Syria’s leaders “should establish working contacts with those opposition forces that are ready for dialogue.”
“As I understood from my conversation with President Assad the day before yesterday, he is ready for such a dialogue,” Putin added.
A military victory over the terrorists “will not solve all problems, but it will create conditions for the main thing: a beginning of a political process to encompass all healthy, patriotic forces of the Syrian society,” Putin said.
His words echoed those of Syrian government officials who have expressed readiness to negotiate with the “patriotic” opposition — a term generally used to describe unarmed, mostly Damascus-based government critics who are tolerated by Assad.
Putin also said Russia and the West are establishing contacts to coordinate their operations.
