Russia holding its ground in face of criticism, as Putin arrives in Paris for talks
As Russia's President Vladimir Putin met with Western leaders in Paris for the first time since Russia launched air strikes in Syria, several countries signed a statement calling on Russia to stop targeting Syrian opposition forces. They say that its air strikes will lead to a further escalation of the conflict.
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Several Western countries, most of them part of the coalition to fight the Islamic State armed group, are condemning Russia's recent strikes in Syria.
French President Francois Hollande has said that he was concerned by Russia's choice of targets, saying that whether it was the US-led coalition or Russia carrying them out, the target must be IS.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, has again said that Russia never promised to fight the Islamic State group only.
"Russian jets do not bomb the wrong targets, they bomb the right targets, but targets right for Bashar al-Assad, not for the Western led coalition," Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London, told RFI.
"Here is the major misunderstanding of the Russian policy. It is classical cheating because the promise to fight Daech (another name for the Islamic State group) was a sort of entry ticket to legalise the Russian participation in the conflict, for Assad and Russian actions aimed to destroy moderate opposition, which is the major military opponent to Assad today."
He explained that Russia's goal is to fight all terrorist groups, meaning everybody fighting against Assad's government.
Following all this criticism, Russia is however holding its ground, saying that its operations are targetting the Islamic State group despite what the Westerners are saying.
"The main goal here is Daech. In Moscow, we speak of three or four different fronts. I think the most important thing is intensity," Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian foreign affairs committee, said on French radio.
He pointed out that in US-led coalition strikes, only 20 per cent of the militiary operations got results, and 80 per cent of the time they did not even strike.
"If you do it in a much more efficient way, I think we'll see the results," he said.
Russia sees that during the past four years of civil war, Assad's government has held on. It is now the only military force on the ground that is actually fighting Daech.
Putin believes Assad should be defended, whereas Western powers argue that removing him from power is vital to end Syria's bloody four-year civil war.
Leaders meeting Friday were compelled to address the situation in Syria, despite the talks being centred on Ukraine.
It has been difficult to separate the conflicts because Russia is at the heart of these conversations, experts say.
"What the situations in Ukraine and in Syria reveal is that there is definitely a geo-political conflit between Russia and the Western countries, and this logic of conflict is quite strong," Jean Sylvestre Mongrenier, a researcher at the Thomas More institute in Paris, told RFI.
"It is not an accident, a misinterpretation or some sort of incomprehension. Dialogue will not put an end to it," he said. "Vladimir Putin has the will to make Russia one of the main leading powers and what we are seeing now is the opening of a new scene. I believe there is a global conflict. We refuse to speak of Cold War, but it is at least a Cold Peace."
Even the EU foreign affairs' office, which is not involved in military interventions, said that they were very concerned by the reports of strikes which have hit civilians in Homs, calling on Russia to target carefully.
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