MOSCOW — Russia has been busy. Really busy. The past couple of weeks have arguably been the country’s most bustling period on the Middle East track:

• On Sept. 12, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu paid a snap visit to Damascus.
• In his second trip to the region during the past two weeks, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the southern resort city of Sochi.
• Top representatives of both Khalifa Hifter of the Libyan National Army and Fayez al-Sarraj of the Libyan Presidential Council met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Moscow, with the latter representative also attending to Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny.

All this activity provides plenty of food for thought on what Russia is up to in the Middle East. What made Shoigu’s Syria visit exceptional among this flurry of events was that its secrecy was strictly guarded — the public and the press only learned about the visit after Shoigu had already spoken with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Russian Defense Ministry later issued a five-line statement saying Shoigu and Assad discussed their “military and technical cooperation … to eliminate the [Islamic State (IS)] in Syria.”

Other matters they discussed, the statement said, included stabilizing Syria, the functioning of de-escalation zones and ensuring humanitarian aid to civilians. Assad’s office added that the meeting focused on recapturing Deir ez-Zor from IS and strengthening “efforts to combat terrorism in all Syrian territory until its utter annihilation."