Ukraine’s Poroshenko cautiously optimistic on peace talks – Interfax Ukraine

PARIS (AP) – With Russian warplanes bombing Syria for a third day, French President Francois Hollande told President Vladimir Putin on Friday that Moscow’s airstrikes must be confined to attacking Islamic State militants, not other rebels opposing the Damascus government.

French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for five hours into the early evening to the discuss the situation in Ukraine.

After the resolution received unanimous approval, Putin’s chief of staff Sergei Ivanov and Federation Council speaker Valentina Matvienko said the matter only concerned Syria and Russia would only conduct airstrikes there, ruling out the use of ground troops.

COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Russian news media were full of accounts of the attacks in Syria, with announcers touting the pinpoint accuracy of the bombing raids and showing video of exploding targets.

“Putin’s economy may be in tatters, and the domestic outlook isn’t great, but his foreign policy game has been very strong lately. Why?”

Ukraine wants the “fake” rebel elections to be cancelled immediately for the peace process to continue, said Kiev presidency official Kostiantyn Yeliseyev.

The official was not authorized to be publicly named and spoke on condition of anonymity. Hoisting Russian Federation to the level of a central interlocutor with the USA is essential to his domestic political narrative of being the strongman who restores cold war duality. He hinted that any change in leadership was far in the future.

But he added “How can we ask the Syrian people to head to the ballot box while they are not safe in the streets?”

“This is more than just military strikes against Islamic State”, commented Igor Korotchenko, editor of National Defense magazine, after Russian lawmakers unanimously authorized the use of force. The Pentagon on Thursday had its first conversation with Russian officials in an effort to avoid any unintended U.S.-Russian confrontations.

The Russian defence ministry has released images showing that its jets hit an IS-held area near its de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria on Thursday. Igor Konashenov as saying that one attack destroyed an IS bombmaking facility in Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province. However given rapidly shifting battlefield terrain in Syria’s chaotic civil war, it can be hard to distinguish which groups holds what territory.

The main recipients may be Islamic State (Isis) scouts, who must be thankful for the Russian standard church’s assignment of Putin’s expeditionary crusade as a “blessed war”. But how Europeans react to Putin over Syria will weigh on our longer term strategy towards Russian Federation.

Vladimir Putin is being glorified as a savior of humanity on Russia’s most-watched television networks for bombing the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and cleaning up after the United States in Syria.

Putin came to Friday’s meetings with the upper hand militarily.

Fighting has all but stopped in separatist eastern Ukraine after 17 months of conflict, but rival elections planned by Kiev and the Russia-backed rebel regions have proved a major sticking point in implementing a peace deal agreed in Minsk in February.

Germany has stayed out of the military action in Syria and pushed for a political solution.

“It was positive that we all could discuss together”, Merkel said.