United Nations, Sept 28

Russian President Vladimir Putin will square off today with US rival Barack Obama at the United Nations, as the Kremlin leader pushes for a new coalition against the Islamic State.

Putin and Obama are due to make competing speeches before the UN General Assembly and will come face-to-face for their first official meeting in over two years.

In the run-up to the key meeting, Putin — isolated by the West over the crisis in Ukraine — has dramatically thrust himself back into the spotlight with a lightning push on the 4.5-year conflict in Syria.

Moscow has put Washington on the back foot by dispatching troops and aircraft to the war-torn country and pushing reluctant world leaders to admit its long-standing ally Bashar al-Assad could cling to power.

The Kremlin strongman called in an interview ahead of the UN summit for “a common platform for collective action” against Islamic State jihadists that would supercede a US-led coalition and involve Assad’s forces.

On the ground, Russia seems to have already started putting the pieces together by agreeing with Iraq, Syria and Iran that their officers will work together in Baghdad to share intelligence on IS.

But both Russia and the US will take part in Syria peace talks in October, along with Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite the sharp disagreements, he saw that Moscow and Washington shared a “desire to work together” on Syria after a meeting with his American counterpart John Kerry on Sunday.

But the US has expressed deep concern about Russia’s maneuvering in Syria and insists Obama will not let Putin off the hook over Ukraine after he shattered ties with the West by seizing the Crimea peninsula and allegedly fueling a separatist conflict. “We’re just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians’ intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here,” a senior State

Department official said.  “We’ve got a long way to go in that conversation.” Washington has demanded that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad step down, but Putin’s rival alliance with Shiite-led states will instead shore up the beleaguered government in Damascus.