Why Meeting Between Putin, Obama May be Breakthrough for World Politics

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US leader Barack Obama will hold a meeting on September 28 at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

This will be the seventh meeting between Putin and Obama in the last six years and the first to take place in the US.

No doubt, the talks are going to be one of the most significant events of the year because the two leaders are expected to discuss Russia’s proposal to create a new coalition in the Middle East to fight Islamic terrorists.

This initiative also involves that Washington and its allies leave Syrian President Bashar al-Assad alone. For the US, that would be an offer hard to accept but impossible to resist. 

For the first time, Putin and Obama met when the US leader came with visit to Moscow in 2009. Putin, then-Russian Prime Minister, told Obama that Moscow hoped for the development of relations between the two countries.

The next meeting came three years after, during the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico in July 2012. This was the first time Putin and Obama officially met as president of their countries. They discussed the situation in Syria.

The third meeting took place on June 17, 2003, during the G8 summit in Britain. This was the last official talk between the two leaders. Following the summit, relations between Moscow and Washington began to deteriorate.

Then, Putin and Obama also met during a 20-minute-long private talk on the sidelines of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg. The two leaders reached a deal on Syrian chemical weapons disarmament.

Next time, Putin and Obama met in Normandy in June 2014 during celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. The two leaders held a 15-minute meeting on Ukraine.

In November 2014, the presidents met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit in China. Putin and Obama had three 15-20-minute-long conversations on Syria, Iran and Ukraine.

Relations between Moscow and Washington seriously destabilized after the crisis in Ukraine broke out. The US supported the new coup-installed Ukrainian government. After Crimea reunited with Russia, the West has groundlessly blamed Russia for "annexation" of the region and imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow.

Tensions between the two countries reached their highest point since the Cold War era, with Washington restoring its policy of deterrence toward Moscow.

Meanwhile, a number of urgent global problems, especially Iran, Syria and the threat of the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group, demanded the active involvement of Russia and cooperation between Washington and Moscow. The US has begun to realize that any efforts to isolate Russia were doomed to fail.

Since US State Secretary John Kerry visited Russia in May, it has been clear that Washington has no other option but to set course to gradually restore ties with Moscow.

In particular, a coalition against ISIL seems to be a good start for the warming of US-Russia relations.