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: