Moscow: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to personally thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin for his military support, in a surprise visit that underlined how Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.

It was Assad’s first foreign trip since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria that has also bolstered Assad’s forces.

The Kremlin kept the visit quiet until Wednesday morning, broadcasting a meeting between the two men in the Kremlin and releasing a transcript of an exchange they had. It did not say whether the Syrian leader was still in Moscow or had returned home.

Putin said he hoped progress on the military front would be followed by moves toward a political solution in Syria, bolstering Western hopes Moscow will use its increased influence on Damascus to cajole Assad into talking to his opponents.

Russian state TV made the meeting its top news item, showing Assad, dressed in a dark suit, talking to Putin, together with the Russian foreign and defence ministers.

The Kremlin has cast its intervention in Syria, its biggest in the Middle East since the 1991 Soviet collapse, as a common sense move designed to roll back ‘international terrorism’ in the face of what it says is ineffective action from Washington.

It is likely to use Assad’s visit to buttress its domestic narrative that its air campaign is just and effective and to underline its assertion that the foray shows it has shaken off the Ukraine crisis to become a serious global player.