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 Russia has already sent military experts to a recently established
center in Baghdad that is coordinating air strikes and ground troops
in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters on Wednesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the center is used to share
information on possible air strikes in Syria.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to say when Russian air
strikes would begin or whether they had already occurred. But Russia
has been steadily building up its forces in Syria and U.S. officials
say such strikes could start any time.
A U.S.-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria. France announced at the weekend that it had launched its
first air strikes in Syria.
Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's chief-of-staff, said parliament had
backed military action by 162 votes to zero after President Bashar
al-Assad asked for Russian military assistance to help fight Islamic
State and other rebel groups.
 "We're talking specifically about Syria and we are not talking about
achieving foreign policy goals or about satisfying our ambitions ...
but exclusively about the national interests of the Russian
Federation," said Ivanov.
MILITARY ACTION
Russian military action would not be open-ended, he added.
"The operations of the Russian air force can not of course go on
indefinitely and will be subject to clearly prescribed time frames."
He declined to say which aircraft would be used and when.
Approval to use force from the Federation Council, the upper house
of parliament, did not mean Russian ground forces would be engaged
in conflict, he said.
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"As our president has already said, the use of ground troops has
been ruled out. The military aim of our operations will be
exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in
their struggle against ISIS (Islamic State)."
Putin's spokesman, Peskov, said the decision meant Russia would be
practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations
"on a legitimate basis" and at the request of "the legitimate
president of Syria".
The last time the Russian parliament granted Putin the right to
deploy troops abroad, a technical requirement under Russian law,
Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine last year.
Analysts said Putin needed to get parliament's backing to ensure
that any military operation was legal under the terms of the Russian
constitution.
"If there will be a united coalition which I doubt, or in the end
two coalitions -- one American and one Russian -- they will have to
coordinate their actions," Ivan Konovalov, a military expert, told
Reuters.
"For Russian forces to operate there legitimately ... a law was
needed."
(Additional reporting by Alexander Winning, Gabriela Baczynska,
Vladimir Soldatkin and Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Andrew Osborn;
Editing by Giles Elgood)
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