President Obama did not raise Russia’s decision to buzz a U.S. destroyer last week in a Monday phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, and the White House downplayed the incident as one that didn’t require a discussion between the two leaders.
“Those activities are destabilizing and a source of some concern, but they’re not particularly unusual,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
Earnest also asserted there are “well-established channels” for talking about incidents between Russian and U.S. aircraft and vessels in international waters. Last week, after the buzzing incidents, the U.S. military attache in Moscow raised the issue with his Russian military counterpart.
Secretary of State John Kerry also raised it with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week.
“We have ample opportunities to express our concerns about these provocative actions, but it did not necessitate a presidential-level conversation,” he said.
Obama and Putin also discussed Moscow’s decision to build a bridge between its mainland and Crimea, and the Russian military’s continued involvement in Syria.
Earnest said Putin’s decision to build a bridge to a disputed region in Ukraine came up in the phone call, although he noted that he didn’t have “a lot of information about [Russia’s] development plans.”
Instead, he said Obama made a “forceful case” that Putin should abide by commitments he made in the Minsk agreement, an effort to halt the war in eastern Ukraine in the fall of 2014.
“The United States continues to believe, and President Obama continues to make a forceful case, that Russia needs to abide by their commitments,” Earnest said. “And by doing so, they can begin to relieve some of the isolation that they have sustained as a result of interfering in the sovereign activities of their neighbors in Ukraine.”
In addition to unresolved Russian aggression in Ukraine, Earnest said the two leaders had a “rather intense discussion” on the Russia’s involvement in Syria’s civil war and its efforts to bolster Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s grip on power.
During that exchange, Obama stressed the importance of Russia pressing the Syrian regime to halt its offensive attacks against rebel groups, according to a White House read-out of the call released after the briefing.
“The two leaders committed to intensify their efforts to shore up” their agreement to cease hostilities in Syria forged in February and “affirmed the need to end attacks by all parties and ensure humanitarian access to all besieged areas,” the read-out states.
“President Obama also stressed that progress on these issues needed to be made in parallel to progress on political transition to end the conflict in Syria.”
