Speaking in China where he attended his final G20 summit, Mr Obama said that he had spoken with Mr Putin for 90 minutes and raised with him the humanitarian situation in the country.
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As for Russia, the French sources said that the optimistic rhetoric adopted by Russian officials was aimed at “dragging Washington” into an agreement sought for by Putin and Obama to defeat ISIS in Syria.
Following the informal “pull-aside” meeting, Obama revealed he and Putin talked about how they could reach “a meaningful, serious, verifiable cessation of hostilities in Syria” and about the situation in Ukraine, which Russian Federation invaded in 2014.
Obama said he’s instructed Kerry, and Putin had told Lavrov “to keep working at it over the next several days – because the faster we can provide some relief to folks on the ground, the better off we’re going to be”.
“We had some productive talks about what a cessation of hostilities would look like for Russian Federation and the United States to focus on our common enemies”, he said.
Obama notes at his news conference before leaving China that he will be the first US president to visit the southeast Asian country.
When asked about his recent reshuffle of regional leaders and the head of his administration, Putin said he envisioned his successor would be younger. “If we can not get the type of agreement we want, we will walk away from that effort”.
It’s unusual for one president to tell another what to say or not say, and much rarer to call the other a “son of a bitch”.
“Given the failure of previous cessations of hostilities to hold, we approach it with some skepticism”, Obama said.
Obama notes at his news conference before leaving China that he will be the first USA president to visit the southeast Asian country.
“An very bad lot of technical things have been worked out, a lot of things are clear, but there still remain, as I say, “a couple of tough issues, Kerry told reporters”.
Russia, however, considers several of the groups the US backs to be “terrorist” organizations and, therefore, as legitimate targets.
But he insisted any work toward easing the deeply troubling humanitarian crisis was valuable.
Obama said it’s essential for Russian Federation to be involved in a political solution.
This week’s interaction between the two men could be a final attempt to salvage what’s become one of the most acrimonious relationships on the global stage.
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