Putin: Russian ship to cooperate with France in Syria

US President Barack Obama on Wednesday praised Russia’s role in talks to end the Syria crisis and offered the prospect of better ties if Moscow focused military strikes on the Islamic State group. Obama’s aides claimed Putin was clinging to his last remaining ally in a changing Middle East. The Kremlin countered that Obama lacked any viable alternative to Assad. French police staged 128 raids overnight in the hunt for accomplices and Islamist militant networks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

One top suspect, Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 26, remains at large after escaping back to Belgium early on Saturday and eluding a police dragnet in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where he lived with his two brothers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call to his navy to cooperate with its French counterpart “as allies” could mark the first time since World War II that Paris and Moscow jointly fight a common foe.

The FSB security service swiftly announced a $50 million bounty in a global manhunt for the bombers.

The Kremlin batted away any suggestion of ISIS bringing down the plane until Tuesday, when it suddenly said it found explosive residue-and stepped up bombing targets in Syria. The ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack on the Metrojet aircraft.

Putin later said that coordination between its military and France was essential in order to intensify assaults against ISIS inside Syria. “Everyone who tries to aid the criminals should understand that they will be responsible for giving them shelter”, he said.

“It’s necessary to work out with them a plan of joint actions both at sea and in the air”, Putin said, adding that both the chief of the general staff and the defence ministry had received orders to that effect.

Putin’s statement came as Russia’s defence minister said its warplanes have fired cruise missiles on militant positions in Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces. “The problem has been that in their initial military incursion into Syria, they’ve been more focused on propping up Mr. Assad and targeting the modern opposition as opposed to targeting those folks that threaten us, Europe and Russian Federation as well”. Intensified Russian airstrikes Tuesday hit the Islamic State group’s stronghold in Syria that also is being pounded by the French military.

Kerry said afterwards that Islamic State was losing ground, but said increased co-ordination with Moscow would require progress in a political drive to end the war.

Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal, meanwhile, sought to cast doubt on the Russian declaration, saying the technical investigation into the crash by experts from Egypt, Russia, France and Ireland had not concluded. “Russian Federation … is now beginning to say to itself that DAESH is also its enemy and has to be hit”.

“We are not well served when in response to a terrorist attack we descend into fear and panic”, the president said.

Sources say cracking the code will “undoubtedly lead to more British jihadis being exposed for supporting and facilitating Islamic State terrorism”.

The two countries struck an agreement on air safety protocols in October.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon”, Putin said.

The previous day, an unmanned RAF Reaper drone provided “surveillance support” to a wave of French air strikes on Raqqa, carried out in retaliation for the Paris attacks. “We are deeply disturbed by language that demonises refugees as a group”, United Nations spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said after government officials in Poland, Slovakia and the German state of Bavaria cited the Paris attacks as a reason to refuse refugees.