Barack Obama and Vladmir Putin meet privately to discuss Syrian ceasefire, talks end in disagreement

Monday, September 5, 2016

At the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, on Monday, US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladmir Putin met privately to discuss plans on a military ceasefire in Syria, but the World's most powerful men refused to reach an agreement and talks ended without any resolution between both parties.

A senior US official told CNN that the two leaders conversed on the sidelines for ninety minutes and worked to clarify gaps in negotiations over the Syrian crisis. 

 

The pair discussed how to target ISIS more, limit Civilian damage and also discussed Ukraine and Russia's cyber intrusions as international pressure mounts on both sides to end the bloodshed between U.S.-backed rebels and Syria’s Russian-aligned regime.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov previously held talks to pursue a Syria ceasefire agreement which then led to Obama and Putin having their own private talks, but after both parties failed to reach an agreement the leaders indicated a desire for Kerry and Lavrov to re-start deliberations in the coming days.

"It was constructive," the US official said after the meeting to CNN.

"It's clear now what our respective positions are," 

 "And we'll see in coming days whether on Syria we can reach a near-term agreement. If we cannot get the type of agreement we want, we will walk away from that effort."

"President Obama and President Putin were not going to get down into the weeds of the language of an agreement and the implementation associated with the agreement," 

The relationship betwen Russian president Vladmir Putin and US President Barack Obama is at an all time low, the lowest it's been between the White House and Kremlin since the Cold War.