| New York Times | - |
WASHINGTON
- The White House announced on Thursday that President Obama will meet
next week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, ending a long
period in which the American leader refused to meet with his counterpart
from the Kremlin.
WASHINGTON — The White House announced on Thursday that President Obama will meet next week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, ending a long period in which the American leader refused to meet with his counterpart from the Kremlin.
Mr.
Putin had requested the meeting, said Josh Earnest, the White House
press secretary, and considering the significant issues involving
Ukraine and Syria, “it makes sense for President Obama to sit down with his counterpart and see if he can get greater clarity about Russia’s intentions inside of Ukraine.”
With
Russia sending more military forces to Syria to prop up the autocratic
government of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s four-year civil
war, Mr. Earnest said a meeting between American and Russian leaders
might help determine “whether or not they’re willing to at least
consider President Obama’s advice when it comes to reinforcing their
military support for the Assad regime.”
Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin will sit down in New York at the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly. Administration officials had said privately on Wednesday that the president had decided to agree to a meeting with Mr. Putin if it could be arranged, but then said that it had not been finalized.
The
announcement ended a debate inside the administration about whether
such a meeting might inadvertently serve to embolden Mr. Putin. In the
end, officials indicated that Mr. Obama decided to take that risk in
hopes of using the opportunity to press the Russian leader on Ukraine
and Syria.
White
House officials said the core message of the meeting would be Mr.
Obama’s insistence that Russia live up to the terms of the cease-fire in
Ukraine negotiated in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus. Citing
Russia’s economic problems and attributing them to American and
European sanctions levied over its intervention in Ukraine, Mr. Earnest
said the meeting in New York would not undermine the international
community’s isolation of Moscow.
“That’s not going to change because of one in-person conversation,” Mr. Earnest said.
Mr. Obama canceled a summit meeting
with Mr. Putin in 2013 after Russia gave shelter to Edward J. Snowden,
the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents.
After Russia annexed Crimea and supported a pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine last year, Mr. Obama limited his contacts even further.
The two have generally had only passing encounters over the last year. They talked in person for a short time
at a D-Day anniversary event in France in June 2014, for instance, and
also had brief words on the sidelines of two international economic
summit meetings in November in China and Australia.
They
last talked by telephone in July after Russia joined the United States,
China and three European powers in negotiating a nuclear agreement with
Iran. But through it all, Secretary of State John Kerry has remained in
regular contact with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey
V. Lavrov, and American officials credited the Russians with playing a
mostly helpful role during the Iran talks.
Even
though the Obama administration says that a main purpose of the meeting
between the two leaders is to press the Russians on Ukraine, the
Kremlin has continued to provide military support to separatists in
eastern Ukraine, and few observers expect the Minsk peace agreement to
be fully put in effect in the coming months.
On Syria, Russia’s decision to begin a military buildup
at an airbase south of Latakia, including the deployment of Su-25
Frogfoot ground attack planes, has increased the Kremlin’s leverage for a
potential political settlement.
Russian
diplomats have asserted in closed-door meetings with Western officials
that they are not wedded to Mr. Assad continuing as Syria’s president.
Obama administration officials hope that they can eventually persuade
Moscow to withdraw support of Mr. Assad and encourage a political
transition in which he would eventually leave power. But the effort to
elicit Mr. Putin’s cooperation on Syria, which has involved a May
meeting in Sochi between Mr. Kerry and the Russian leader, has yet to
bear fruit.
“Right now, Assad has refused to have a serious discussion,” Mr. Kerry said Saturday during a visit to London, “and Russia has refused to help bring him to the table in order to do that.”
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