Presidential spokesmen in Washington and Moscow provide differing statements over who proposed meeting, what will be discussed and when

President Barack Obama will meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York next week, the White House confirmed on Thursday.

But soon after the meeting was announced, apparently contradictory remarks from Washington and Moscow emerged on the encounter’s genesis and purpose.



In the US, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the “top agenda item” for the meeting would be Russian support for separatist fighters in Ukraine, with the leaders also expected to discuss an apparent Russian military buildup in Syria.

“President Obama will once again use this occasion to impress on President Putin the importance for Russia to keep the commitments they’ve made” to withdraw from the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Earnest said.



In Moscow, meanwhile, the presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the main topic of the meeting would in fact be Syria and that Obama and Putin would discuss Ukraine only “if time allows”.

“There will be time,” retorted Earnest in remarks to journalists.

Earnest said that Putin asked for the meeting at the United Nations. When asked, Peskov would only say that it would take place by “mutual agreement”. There was even initial uncertainty over the date, but the White House later confirmed the meeting would take place on Monday.



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The mixed messages arguably offer a superficial taste of deep geopolitical divisions likely to be on display next week.



“It’s clear that he’s interested in the attention of the leader of the United States of America,” Earnest said, of the Russian president. “And given the lengthy list of concerns we have about Russia’s conduct in a couple international hotspots, a face-to-face sit-down seems appropriate at this juncture. A meeting like this does have the potential for giving the United States better insight into what the Russian intentions are.”

The defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said it was “possible but not yet clear” that Russian and US interests overlapped on issues involving Syria. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call on Thursday that “it would be irresponsible to not” to hold a meeting with the Russian leader, given multiple international crises.

“President Obama was urged to have this meeting with president Putin by some of our closest European allies,” Rhodes said. “We will be measuring the outcome of this meeting not only by the nature of their discussions but by what follows.”

The two leaders have not met face to face since two meetings last November, at a G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, and an Asian economic summit in Beijing. They last spoke on the telephone in July, about the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran. In June 2015 they held a phone call to talk about the conflict in Ukraine.

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On Syria, Earnest said Obama would ask for Russian support in combatting Isis and would “make clear once again that Russia doubling down on their support for the [Bashar] Assad regime is a losing bet”.

Earnest dismissed the idea that the meeting would undermine US and European attempts to isolate the Russian leader, arguing that Russia had been significantly weakened by global economic sanctions on the country following the outbreak of war in Ukraine in spring 2014.

The International Monetary Fund projects that Russia’s economy will contract by 3-4% this year, Earnest said, and Russia has fallen from the ninth-largest economy to 15th.



Experts and officials in Russia have been cautiously optimistic on the possibility of Obama and Putin reaching an agreement on cooperation in Syria.



“There’s a narrow window of opportunity for cooperation between the United States and Russia in Syria. But they’re limited by sharp differences over Assad, Ukraine and US sanctions,” Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.



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Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Centre Moscow, said Putin would be likely to try to enlist Obama’s support to fight Isis alongside Assad’s government. By increasing its military presence in Syria in recent weeks, Russia is trying to achieve equal status with the United States in the Middle East, he said.

“I think US policy is pragmatic enough that it will express its concern about the Russian involvement [in Syria] but will be willing to consider cooperating with Russia there,” he said.

The main point of contention will be Assad’s future: Russia wants to preserve his leadership in the short term. “No matter what happens with Assad, Russia won’t agree to abandon him at start of process,” Trenin said. “Maybe at end of process there will be elections and Assad’s position won’t be preserved, but that will be at the end of process only.”

Putin will probably also seek to weaken US pressure on him for backing rebels in eastern Ukraine. Analyst Igor Bunin wrote on the Moskovsky Komsomolets news site on Thursday that the recent decline in fighting in eastern Ukraine and Putin’s willingness to “freeze the situation” there showed he wanted to “switch from his old idea of resurrecting the Russian world and return to the group of eight countries that rule the whole world”.

