Today, for the first time in 2 years, after visiting Saudi Arabia last week, John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the highest-level U. S. visit in two years, and certainly since the start of the Ukraine presidential coup which has since devolved into a civil war.
According to the WSJ, the top U. S. diplomat “planned to urge Mr. Putin to abide by a Ukraine cease-fire agreement reached in February and reiterate the U. S. pledge to roll back sanctions if Russia is found to be in full compliance, a senior administration official said.”
That’s not all: Kerry also intends to push for a bid to force Syria’s leader from power, nuclear talks with Iran, strife in Yemen and the fragmentation of Libya, officials said. Kerry also will raise the U. S. opposition to Russia’s sale to Iran of a powerful air defense system.
So yeah, quite a lot on the Ketchup quasi heir’s plate, and yet somehow we doubt that Russian strategy will change about any of the abovementioned items by even the slightest bit.
As the WSJ adds, ahead of Mr. Kerry’s meeting with Mr. Putin, he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for over four hours at a hotel in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. They likely discussed more of the same, or rather Kerry was talking and Lavrov was listening.
The two are shown in the photo below, in which Kerry presents his Russian counterpart with two Idaho potatoes during a meeting in Paris last year.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 05/12/2015.
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