President Obama’s harsh criticism of Vladimir Putin’s policies on Monday at the U.N. General Assembly didn’t erase the fact that the Russian president has checkmated him in Ukraine and Syria.
A senior administration official told reporters after the two leaders met privately for the first time in two years that the two sides “fundamentally disagreed” on the role Syrian President Bashar Assad would play in that country’s future.
“I think the Russians certainly understood the importance of there being a political resolution in Syria and there being a process that pursues a political resolution,” the official said of the 90-minute meeting. “We have a difference about what the outcome of that process would be.”
In an earlier speech, Obama slammed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and land grabs in eastern Ukraine by Russian-supported rebels, saying “we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today.”
On Syria, Obama repeated his public stance that Assad’s brutal attempts to retain power by killing hundreds of thousands and displacing half of Syria’s 22 million people, made his continuation in power impossible.
“Nowhere is our commitment to international order more tested than in Syria,” he told the General Assembly. “When a dictator slaughters tens of thousands of his own people, that is not just a matter of one nation’s internal affairs — it breeds human suffering on an order of magnitude that affects us all. Likewise, when a terrorist group beheads captives, slaughters the innocent and enslaves women, that’s not a single nation’s national security problem — that is an assault on all humanity.”
But Russia already has changed the tone of the global discussion with the dispatch of troops and advanced weaponry to Syria in support of Assad’s regime, while the Obama administration, in spite of a year-long bombing campaign against the Islamic State in the country, has offered little more than rhetoric against the dictator who’s blamed for the bulk of the violence in four years of civil war.
What the U.S. has done in Syria has amounted to little as a $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels has come up short. This month it was disclosed that officials had trained “four or five” fighters, nowhere near the goal of 5,400. Lawmakers were already furious that the number was so low. Then on Friday, the Pentagon acknowledged that a Syrian commander had turned over U.S. equipment to the al-Nusra Front in order to guarantee safe passage.
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In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has broken with the allied hard line against Assad and said he needs to be included in any talks on Syria’s future. Israel’s military meanwhile said it would coordinate with Russian military officers at a high level to ensure there’s no conflict between the two countries’ forces in Syria.
Iraq meanwhile announced Sunday that it would cooperate with Russia, Iran and Syria on “security and intelligence” against the Islamic State extremists.
And despite Obama’s criticisms on Monday, Putin returned fire, saying Assad and Kurdish fighters were the only groups truly taking on ISIS in Syria. While the U.S. has pressed to de-legitimize Assad, Putin is doing the opposite.
“We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and Kurdish militia are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria,” Putin said through a translator to the United Nations General Assembly.
Putin also said he sees Syria’s army as “valiantly fighting” the Islamic State threat.
On Ukraine, the meeting with Obama was a victory for Putin. The Russian leader has been isolated internationally since the annexation of Crimea in March 2014. But administration officials argued that it was a good opportunity to make progress on that issue as well as resolve concerns about Moscow’s intentions in Syria.
“Any way that we can begin to have a conversation is a step towards where we need to be,” Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, said on Monday.
But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said the meeting was a gift to Putin that should never have been offered.
“President Obama’s decision to meet with Vladimir Putin is as misguided as it is unnecessary,” the Arizona Republican said. “It plays right into Putin’s hands by breaking his international isolation, undermining U.S. policy, and legitimizing Putin’s destabilizing behavior — from dismembering Ukraine to propping Bashar Assad in Syria.”
