It is brilliant because Putin has credibility on the subject. In fact, in some ways, Putin’s presidency was born out of the war on terror. He spent two years fighting the Islamist insurgents in Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region before he felt the West really woke up to the issue. It is why, on September 11, 2001, he was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush to express not just his concern, but his empathy and hope that the two countries could work together on this pressing issue. Throughout the following decades, both Russia and the West continued to do battle with the terrorism phenomenon, but Russia suffered the brunt of it: There were far more—and far more spectacular—attacks on Russian soil.

For a while, and especially as relations with George W. Bush and then Barack Obama soured, Putin and the Russians were deeply embittered by the West’s inability to understand the constant threat under which they lived. And there seemed to be little gratitude for the help that the Russian government did provide, like allowing NATO to use a transit point on its territory for Afghanistan-bound soldiers and materiel, and a Russian intelligence service’s warning U.S. authorities about the Tsarnaev brothers in 2011, two years before they detonated to bombs at the Boston Marathon.

But then Ukraine happened. Taking advantage of chaos in Kiev, Putin invaded and annexed Crimea in March 2014. The move, which shattered international law and norms, got some of Russia’s biggest companies—and Putin’s closest friends—slapped with U.S. and EU sanctions. Putin responded with counter-sanctions and, after years of trying to have a seat at the table, Russia found itself isolated from the West in a way it hadn’t been since Soviet times.

Desperate to break out of the isolation, Putin hit on masterful strategy just as Russia sent forces into Syria and a wave of terrorist attacks hit Europe in 2015. After the Paris attacks in November of that year, the Kremlin stopped obfuscating and dragging its feet, and admitted that the passenger plane full of Russians that exploded in the sky above Sharm el-Sheikh that October had in fact been downed by ISIS. The Kremlin also published part of a telegram Putin sent to then-French President Francois Hollande. “This tragedy is additional proof of the barbaric nature of terrorism that is posing a challenge to human civilization. It is obvious that to counter this evil effectively the entire international community needs to truly join efforts,” Putin wrote. “I would like to confirm the readiness of the Russian side to closely cooperate with our French partners in investigating the crime committed in Paris.”

The point was clearly that we are all facing one enemy, and it would be foolish to fight it separately. By July 2016, when a terrorist rammed a truck through a crowd in Nice, Putin cut to the chase and taped a video address to Hollande and the French. “Russia knows terrorism and the threat it creates for us all,” he said. “Our people have had to deal with similar tragedies many times, and we are deeply distressed at the news. We would like to express our sympathy and solidarity with the French nation. … I would like to stress again that only through a united effort can we defeat terrorism.”