Friendship wins

On November 19, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton announced that Russia had changed its approach to the operation in Syria.

“The Russians used to target primarily Assad’s opponents (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. - NT ), and not the Islamic State group * . I think this has changed now,” she said, calling François Hollande’s upcoming visit to Moscow one of the evidence of the new situation.

By and large, Clinton's words did not sound like a revelation. A few days earlier, Barack Obama spoke about Russia as a “constructive partner” of the United States in the Syrian dossier, who, as you know, retired for half an hour to talk with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey. And there is no doubt that this conversation concerned primarily the coordination of efforts in Syria. The paradox is that this is not a revelation either. Barack Obama has consistently rejected attempts by hardliners to systematize the anti-Putin course. "We don't want a new cold war," the US president has said many times. He is supported in this by National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Senior Political Adviser Valerie Jarrett. Secretary of State John Kerry is closer to the position of the White House, but the new Secretary of Defense Ash Carter takes a more "hawkish" position, reflecting the mood of the Pentagon, although the army is by no means eager to fight Russia. Two wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq - and the global fight against al-Qaeda * and ISIS * strained all the resources of the US military.

Even before the terrorist attacks in Paris, at the very end of September, Putin and Obama held talks on Syria during the UN General Assembly. Long before that, in February, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov visited Washington for an antiterrorist summit, which also attracted the attention of observers. Bortnikov was then perhaps the first Russian official to admit that up to one third of foreign ISIS fighters * are from the former USSR. Let us also mention that Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have repeatedly held consultations on Syria throughout the year.

The attacks allow Putin, to use Anglicism here, to “get off the tree” he climbed after the events in Ukraine without losing face (and Crimea)

The explosion of the plane over Sinai and the terrorist attacks in Paris came in handy for Russia, even if it sounds like a cynical maxim from the book of Niccolo Machiavelli. The terrorist attacks allow Putin, to use Anglicism here, to “get off the tree” he climbed after the events in Ukraine without losing face (and Crimea). What's next? “Sanctions on Crimea will last as long as the sanctions (of the United States. - NT ) in connection with the occupation of the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union,” a senior American official recently said at a closed briefing in one of the American “think tanks”. That is, if America needs 50 years for this, then so be it. But one clarification needs to be made here. The "Crimean" sanctions are much softer than those that were adopted against Russia because of the Donbass. And the process of their cancellation will be launched immediately after the US and the EU recognize that the Minsk-2 agreements have been fulfilled.

Things aren’t going so badly for Putin right now: François Hollande is about to go to Moscow and Washington to coordinate the campaign against ISIS * , while German business is only dreaming about how to lift sanctions and return to Russian markets. , which organized the Parisian bloodbath, It turns out that ISIS reconciled Vladimir and Barak. The age-old political principle "to be friends against someone" lives and wins.

***** «Исламское государство» (ИГ, ИГИЛ), «Аль-Каида» — запрещенные в России террористические организации