United by a deep hostility towards Islamists, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin said yesterday they were both committed to fighting the threat of terrorism.

The general and the former KGB officer found common ground on security at talks in Cairo that signalled a rapprochement between their two countries, at a time when relations between Egypt and the United States have cooled.

Al-Sisi, fighting a raging Islamist insurgency in the Sinai region, said Putin had agreed with him that “the challenge of terrorism that faces Egypt, and which Russia also faces, does not stop at any borders”.

Putin, making his first state visit to Egypt in a decade, said they agreed on “reinforcing our efforts in combating terrorism”.

The Kremlin chief was the first leader of a major power to visit Egypt since former army chief al-Sisi became president in 2014, having toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi the previous year after mass protests against his rule.

Al-Sisi has repeatedly called for concerted counter-terrorism efforts in the Middle East and the West. Egypt has fought Islamist militancy for decades, mostly through security crackdowns that have weakened, but failed to eliminate, radical groups.

Egypt and the Soviet Union were close allies until the 1970s when Cairo moved closer to the United States, which brokered its 1979 peace deal with Israel.

That relationship cooled after the army’s overthrow of Morsi, which prompted Washington to suspend some military aid. Al-Sisi has since opened up to Moscow, describing Russia yesterday as a “strategic friend”.