PUTIN PIVOTS

Leader to talk Syria at UN

MOSCOW Russian President Vladimir Putin will storm into New York on Monday seeking to prove that he will not be isolated at his first appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in a decade.

With a jackknife military and diplomatic pivot toward Syria, Putin has tried to mitigate the damage of a year’s adventurism in Ukraine in a defiant gambit he hopes will appeal to the West’s cold logic and need.

The sudden deployment to Syria of Russian warplanes and battle tanks has upended the West’s calculus of freezing out Russia and helped prompt a head-to-head meeting between Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday in New York that was unthinkable just weeks ago.

In Moscow, Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have declared that Russia’s call for a coalition against ISIL is gaining traction in the West. Though the White House said that Obama’s core message at the meeting with Putin would focus on Ukraine and not Syria, it appears that the Russians at least have a foot in the door.

A senior western diplomat in Moscow this week said there is a growing appetite for dialogue with Putin about the Syrian crisis, particularly as Europe faces an unprecedented flood of migrants, many fleeing the war in Syria.

“He is not the one who needs a deal. He has time on his side. It is us who needs a deal more,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Whatever happens in Syria, we know that he will probably be a part of it.”

“Meanwhile, we see that he is attempting to steer the conversation away from Ukraine entirely,” he added.

The road to any compromise between Russia and the West will face a steep battle, as anger over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine’s southeast has shattered diplomatic ties at most levels and driven relations to their worst since the end of the Cold War. And even if Putin is able to secure meetings with Western leaders, it does not ensure any results.

Speaking before world leaders on Monday, Putin will attack the United States’ use of sanctions, Lavrov told reporters, likely including the individual and sectoral sanctions imposed on Russia last summer over the Ukraine crisis.