U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin's First Formal Meeting In Two Years Monday Sep 28,2015

Obama and Putin's disparate views of the grim situation in Syria

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply disagreed Monday Sep 28,2015 over the chaos in Syria, with Obama urging a political transition to replace the Syrian president but Putin warning it would be a mistake to abandon the current government.

 

After dueling speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, Obama and Putin also met privately for 90 minutes — their first face-to-face encounter in nearly a year.

The leaders have long had a strained relationship, with ties deteriorating to post-Cold War lows after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and allegedly backed rebels in Ukraine's east. The U.S. has sought to punish Russia through economic sanctions

At the heart of their dispute over Syria is the fate of embattled Syrian leader Bashar Assad, a Russian ally. The U.S. has long called for Assad to leave power, while Russia has cast the Syrian government as the only viable option for confronting the Islamic State, a militant group that has taken advantage of the vacuum created by the civil war.

During his address to the UN, Obama declared, "We must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking shortly after the U.S. president, urged the world to stick with Assad.
"We believe it's a huge mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities, with the government forces, those who are bravely fighting terror face-to-face," Putin said during his first appearance at the U.N. gathering in a decade.

In fact, Russia has appeared to deepen its support for Assad in recent weeks, sending additional military equipment and troops with the justification that it is helping the government fight the Islamic State.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin's disparate views of the grim situation in Syria left little indication of how the two countries might work together to end a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and resulted in a flood of refugees.