Category: Aggregated

Secretary of State John Kerry reported yesterday that he and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov “have been instructed” by their presidents to try to work out a common strategy on Syria, and to that end, he and Lavrov will meet today. The instructions came at yesterday’s meeting between Obama and Putin, a meeting which Kerry described today as “genuinely constructive, very civil,” and “very candid.”

Kerry’s next statements made clear that with “Obama and The Girls” (as retired Col. Pat Lang is wont to say about Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, et al.) still in power, a common strategy is unlikely. Russia, Syria, Iran, and “we and our coalition friends” could end the violence in a very short period of time, Kerry said—if Bashir al-Assad leaves. “You cannot bring peace in Syria as long as Assad is, in fact, there…. It all depends on one man, and Russia and Iran should not be so stubborn here that they tie this whole thing up simply because of one person.”

Kerry’s “one man,” unfortunately, was not a reference to Obama.

Foreign Minister Lavrov, for his part, told RT from New York City, that the two presidents

Putin made the same point about the Baghdad information center’s purpose in his September 28 press conference with Russian journalists, and that it was open to all. He pointed to the utter failure of Obama’s current “coalition” (never mentioning Obama by name):

Putin cited Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan as possible regional candidates to join the international “anti-Hitler coalition” he proposed in his UNGA speech.

Asked why he made the comparison with the Nazis, Putin said:

Among several meetings Putin held on the sidelines of the UNGA in his one-day visit to New York, were ones with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi. 

The 90-minute meeting between Presidents Obama and Putin, finally held Monday, was no one-on-one, but a formal affair of five or six officials of each nation—Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry among them—flanking their Presidents facing each other on opposite sides of a long table.

Obama said nothing about the meeting afterwards, leaving it to an unnamed “senior administration official” to give a brief report later that evening that the meeting had been “productive” and “focused,” dealing principally with Ukraine and Syria. The unnamed official did, however, report that U.S.-Russia military coordination on Syrian operations, which the Obama White House had earlier shot down, will be established. As National Public Radio summarized the official’s report, the two presidents “did agree to have their militaries maintain communication in order to ‘deconflict'” operations in Syria.

Putin Doesn’t Minsk Words

Unlike the White House, the Kremlin posted pictures of the meeting, and President Putin held a press conference with Russian journalists at the United Nations afterwards. Putin, too, characterized the meeting as “very constructive, businesslike, and surprisingly very frank,” and expressed his view that it was very useful, but he was blunt about the continuing dangerous state of Russian-U.S. relations, and who is responsible for that state:

Putin emphasized the importance of the Minsk process on Ukraine; as for Syria, he made clear that Obama’s regime change policy, and insistence that Bashir al-Assad must be removed from office before all else, remains a central difference.

Putin reiterated to the Russian journalists that Russia will not yield on the principle of national sovereignty. He reported that he had discussed with Obama the fact that U.S., French, and Australian bombings inside Syria are illegal, as there is neither a UN Security Council resolution nor an invitation from the legitimate government backing them up. As for Assad, Putin said: