Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Damascus on Sunday against the backdrop of the US-Israel-Iran war, marking the Ukrainian leader’s first visit to the country since the fall of Syria’s long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Iran’s military support for their respective foes — in Zelenskyy’s case, Russia, and in Sharaa’s case, the Assad regime — has created common ground between their two countries. Coming on the heels of Zelenskyy’s Gulf tour to promote his military’s expertise in countering Iran’s drones, the meeting came as no surprise.

The presence of Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, at their encounter and at a separate meeting between the Syrian and Ukrainian foreign ministers was unexpected, analysts say. In hindsight, though, perhaps not.

Zelenskyy was traveling from Turkey, where he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the day before. That hardly explains why Fidan would have tagged along, except that the Turkish foreign minister has become something of a shadow presence in Syrian diplomacy.

Most memorably, Fidan showed up at the White House in November just as Sharaa was meeting with President Donald Trump and ended up being in the room, creating considerable awkwardness, diplomatic sources confirmed at the time.