When President Vladimir Putin agreed to address the UN General Assembly the international diplomatic community expected that he would use the opportunity to bolster Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. Yet when the Russian leader addresses the assembly tomorrow – his first appearance at the body in over ten years – that same community will be agog to see if he will explain his country’s growing military involvement in war-torn Syria. Expectations have been raised by the announcement from the White House that Putin will also have a one-to-one meeting with President Barack Obama later in the day.

In a year which has seen the Russian leader largely side-lined and wrong-footed by the west over his Ukraine policy tomorrow’s speech in New York will give him a platform to refresh his international image. It will also put Russia back at centre stage at a time when Syria provides so many keys to solving current world problems – from the growing refugee crisis in Europe to the need to confront the Islamic State. As a long-term ally of Russia Syria has reason to expect military and diplomatic support but until recently Putin was wary about doing too much to bolster President Bashar al-Assad in case the move was seen as a diversion from his country’s difficulties in Ukraine.

But according to the authoritative Syrian Observatory for Human Rights there are now substantial Russia forces in the country supporting the Syrian government from the main air force base in Latakia. These are in addition to existing naval facilities at the Mediterranean port of Tartous and include 24 strike aircraft and 14 attack helicopters including MI-24 gunships flown by Russian crews as well as an estimated 200 ground troops with artillery support and at least two batteries of SA-22 surface-to-air missiles to provide force protection. Last week the Russian warplanes took part in air strikes against Islamic State positions near the Kweiris air base in the east of Aleppo province, where government troops have long been surrounded by Islamist militants.

Even before Putin speaks in New York tomorrow the Russian deployment in Syria has caused alarm bells to ring in the west. US defence secretary Ash Carter compared the move to “pouring gasoline on the civil war in Syria” by supporting the Assad regime against those opposed to it while his British opposite number Michael Fallon claimed that the Russian action “further complicates an immensely complicated situation.”

There are also fears that the move could trigger a new Cold War in the Middle East with the possibility that Russian warplanes in Syria could confront US and UK aircraft flying from bases in Turkey and Cyprus. At the very least the tensions could be increased if there are any incidents involving rival warplanes during air strikes against Islamic State positions. A Royal Air Force source explained that as different communication protocols are used “there is always a chance of things going wrong during an attack”. It has been alleged that the Russian warplanes flew with their transponders switched off, making identification difficult.

The presence of the Russian aircraft will also make it impossible to impose a no-fly zone over Syria and will confuse an already fraught situation in the air war against the Islamic State. It was noted by western observers that four of the Russian military aircraft are SU-27 Flankers which operate as air combat aircraft making them surplus to requirements as the Islamic State does not possess an air force. Last week Dr Jonathan Eyal director of the Royal United Services think tank argued that the arrival of the Russian forces was all about power projection and made it clear that Putin was intent on locking himself into “any kind of deal that is going to take place there.”

In response to the criticism Russia continues to argue that it has every right to support one of its main allies in the Middle East, the other one being Iran. Not only is Syria an important client and has been since the days of the Soviet Union but today it is in the front line in the war against the Islamic State which is also viewed as a hostile entity by Moscow. Putin has already proposed the formation of an anti-Islamic State coalition to combat the growth of Islamic extremism and that could be repeated during his visit to the UN. Russian diplomatic sources also say that he will use the example of Libya to explain why the presence of Russian forces in Syria could prevent the type of implosion which occurred President Muammar Gaddafi was ousted from power in 2011.

This sidesteps the question of whether or not Assad should be deposed while allowing Russia to emerge as a responsible player in the affairs of the Middle East. According to Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think-tank the time is ripe for a new approach in dealing with the crisis in Syria and Russia could provide the means of breaking the current deadlock. “The West should embrace cooperation with Russia on the basis of shared interests,” he argued in a recent discussion paper on the subject. “In Syria, no matter how strongly Moscow and Washington disagree about Assad’s departure from power, neither Americans nor Russians want chaos or the establishment of a radical Sunni Islamist regime.”

Although this provides common ground the Russian deployment carries a number of dangers not least for Putin. It is clear that he sees this challenge as an opportunity to make up for ground lost in Ukraine where western sanctions have hurt the Russian economy but there are also important lessons to be learned from history. When the Russian forces started arriving in Syria fighters opposed to Assad likened the deployment to the doomed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1970s and forecast that it would meet the same fate. Using social media to broadcast his message Abu Yousef al-Mouhajer, a rebel fighter in the Latakia area warned: “It is in our calculations that the battle will now extend for more years than it would have without the Russians.”