G20 offers Putin one more stab at Obama on Syria, Ukraine

The G20 summit starting in China on Sunday gives

Russian President Vladimir Putin one more chance

to try to strongarm US leader Barack Obama over

Syria and Ukraine as their fraught relationship

nears an end.

In recent years the two world leaders have barely

been able to hide their disdain for each other as ties

between Washington and Moscow fell to their

lowest level since the Cold War over the crisis in

Ukraine.

Now with elections for a new US president just over

two months away, Russian analysts say an

emboldened Putin could see the G20 as an

opportunity to press for concessions from Obama,

particularly on Syria if he wants to make progress

on the war before leaving office.

While neither the Kremlin nor the White House

have announced any official bilateral meeting at the

two-day gathering in the eastern Chinese city of

Hangzhou, it is expected that the pair will talk at

least informally.

Putin “will try to get from Barack Obama… what he

hasn’t been able to obtain from Washington in the

past,” independent political analyst Maria Lipman

told AFP.

– ‘Crisis of confidence’ –

But commentators said that with relations between

the two sides in the gutter it was unlikely any major

breakthrough would happen before the end of

Obama’s time in power.

“There is very little time left,” Alexei Makarkin,

from Moscow-based think tank The Centre for

Political Technologies, said. “And there is a huge

crisis of confidence between the two countries.”

Russia and the United States back opposing sides in

Syria’s five-year war, which has left 280,000 people

dead and forced half the population to flee their

homes.

Moscow, an ally of Damascus, and Washington,

which supports moderate rebels fighting to unseat

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, are nominally co-

chairs of the international effort seeking a

negotiated end to the fighting.

The pair have been trying to hammer out a deal on

a new ceasefire in Syria and possible cooperation

against the Islamic State group and other radical

jihadists, but their top diplomats failed to clinch a

final agreement at talks in Geneva last week.

Obama said earlier in August that while “the US

remains prepared to work with Russia to try to

reduce the violence and strengthen our efforts”

against jihadists, there remained a fundamental

gulf.

“I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians

and Vladimir Putin,” he said.

– From reset to rupture –

When Obama first came into the White House there

was some hope in the US that Moscow and

Washington could improve ties after bitter disputes

over the invasion of Iraq and Moscow’s war with

Georgia.

Ex-lawyer Dmitry Medvedev was president and in

2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched her

bid to “reset” relations with the Kremlin. But the

much hoped for boost in ties failed to materialise.

When ex-KGB officer Putin — whom Obama had

chided for his “Cold War approaches” — returned

to the presidency in 2012 amid mass protests the

Kremlin blamed on the West, it appeared to spell

the end for any real attempts at rapprochement.

Ties were ultimately ruptured by Moscow’s

response to the 2014 pro-EU revolution in Kiev that

ousted Russian-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych

and threatened to wrench Ukraine out of Moscow’s

orbit.

The Kremlin seized the Crimea peninsula from

Ukraine in March 2014 — in a dramatic rewriting of

post-Soviet borders — before, according to the

West, going on to fuel a separatist conflict in

Ukraine’s east.

The US slapped sanctions on Moscow and tried to

isolate Putin, but the Russian strongman muscled

his way back to centre stage by launching a surprise

bombing campaign in Syria in September 2015 to

back Assad.

Despite his harsh criticism of the Russian leadership

throughout his two terms, Russian foreign policy

analyst Fyodor Lukyanov said Obama has always

appeared “very prudent” in handling Putin.

In 2013 Washington backed away from using

military force against Assad’s regime after it

crossed the “red line” of using chemical weapons,

allowing Putin instead to help push Damascus to

give up its stockpiles.

Despite firm diplomatic backing, the US has also

refused to send much-needed weaponry to Ukraine

to help Kiev battle the pro-Russian rebels.

“

Together Putin and Obama have avoided the

worst,” Lukyanov said. “They have prevented

Russian-American relations from turning into a

direct conflict.”

And with the more hawkish Hillary Clinton now

favourite to beat Donald Trump to be the next

president, Lukyanov said that Moscow realised it

might face a tougher US response in the future.

“It will be very difficult for Moscow to find common

ground with Washington after Obama’s departure,”

he said.