“You’re paying big attention and putting a lot of efforts into the creation of a broad anti-terrorist coalition”, TASS quoted Putin as saying at the start of his meeting with his French counterpart Francois Hollande Hollande in the Kremlin on Thursday.
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“We will exchange information about whom to hit and whom not to hit”, Mr Hollande told a joint news conference.
The Russian leader also commented on the downing of a Russian military jet by Turkish forces near that country’s border with Syria on Tuesday, an incident that has led to increasingly tense rhetoric and a breakdown of relations between the two countries.
Russian Federation and France also agreed to coordinate their strikes against the Islamic State group.
“I believe that the fate of the president of Syria must stay in the hands of the Syrian people”, Putin said.
But he also accused Washington of not doing enough to prevent its coalition ally Turkey from shooting down one of its jets.
French President Francois Hollande now has two missions: protect his country from terrorism, and see if he can patch up an increasingly tense relationship between the US and Russian Federation.
But Putin used the media conference to continue the war of words over the downing of the jet by repeating accusations against Turkey of turning a blind eye to oil smuggling by Islamic State.
Since the Paris terror attacks on November 13, Hollande has held that France is at war with the terror group and vowed to destroy it.
In an interview with Al-Hurra TV in Baghdad this week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia’s intervention in Syria was aimed at helping al-Assad. He called for forming a transitional government that would draft a new constitution and hold elections.
Both countries are carrying out bombing raids against IS in Syria.
The Russian response to that incident seems to be toughening up, with the announcement in Moscow of sanctions against Turkey. “We do face a fundamental threat to our security”.
The sole surviving pilot said he received no warning and the aircraft did not violate Turkish air space, but the Turkish military released audio recordings claiming to show the jet was repeatedly warned to change course.
A Foreign Ministry statement said Thursday that Turkish offices had come under what it called physical attacks disguised as protests. As things stand, neither Turkey nor Russian Federation has backed down from verbal attacks on each other. Protesters in Moscow pelted the Turkish Embassy with eggs and rocks, shattering windows. Police cleared the area and made some arrests shortly after the protest began.
In Berlin, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Germany would send 650 soldiers to Mali to provide some relief to French forces fighting militants there.
The decision still needs parliamentary approval, but it was expected to not meet much resistance by lawmakers. “These are our closest allies, and they want help”, he said.
“The more we shrink that territory, the less they can pretend that they are somehow a functioning state”, he said in the interview. On Thursday, Moscow said it had already deployed powerful S-400 ground-to-air missiles that can reach across the country and far into Turkey from the Russian air base in the province of Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
Russian Federation and France will now intensify the exchange of intelligence information and coordinate their strikes against Islamic State militants.
The National Assembly approved a motion to prolong strikes by 515 votes to four, with 10 abstentions, as the defense minister said all 27 other European Union members had offered “direct or indirect” military support.
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“If you are seeking the source of weaponry and financial power of [Isis], the first place to look is the Assad regime and countries that act with it”, he said.
