On Wednesday, senior officials with both the Israeli and Russian governments met to discuss the avoidance of accidental collisions in Syrian airspace. The meeting of senior diplomats in Israel follows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.
According to Alexey Drobinin, minister-counselor at the Russian Embassy in Israel, the meetings proved successful.
"Russia will not take any action that will endanger Israel’s national security," Drobinin told Israel Radio.
"We understand that Israel has national security interests and we take these into account when we formulate our regional policies," he added. "There are over a million former Soviet citizens living in Israel and we need to take this into account."
But while talks between Russian officials and their counterparts in the Israeli government have helped ensure peaceful cooperation during the conflict, Moscow has had a harder time conferring with Washington and Ankara.
On Wednesday, Moscow offered to share targeting coordinates with the US-led coalition in Syria, but that proposal was initially ignored.
"This means that either our partners do not have such coordinates or that they for some reason do not want us to hit these targets," said Colonel-General Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, according to RIA Novosti.
Responding, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that Washington has ruled out any intelligence sharing with Moscow.
"I don’t know how you share intelligence when you don’t share a common objective," Kirby said during a press briefing.
Russia has been very clear about its goal to weed out the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group.
While Turkey has in recent days accused Russia of violating its airspace, Moscow was quick to apologize for that incident, and Drobinin remains hopeful that talks with Ankara could still be possible.
"We have a full understanding of Turkey’s worries and we think that the right way to allay these fears is to allow professional soldiers to have in-depth discussions," he said. "Such a proposal has been made and I think that we are now at the start of such talks between the Russian and Turkish armies."
Whatever Turkey decides, Drobinin stressed the importance of coordination in the region.
"It is important that there should be such talks between Russia and all the other countries who are interested in exchanging intelligence and operational information…including the United States."
