When it comes to finding a peaceful resolution to Syria’s civil war, Moscow and Washington are trying to keep their lines of communication open without crowding each other.
On May 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump had their third phone conversation since Trump was elected in November. The first call took place Jan. 28, soon after the inauguration, while the second occurred shortly after the deadly terrorist attack in Russia’s “northern capital” of St. Petersburg, when Trump was among the first to express condolences to the Russian people. Both of those conversations revolved largely around ways to combat terrorism together, but substantively did not go beyond a “joint pledge” to do so. Trump’s offer of “the full support of the United States government in responding to the [St. Petersburg] attack and bringing those responsible to justice” was received with cautious optimism in Moscow that moving forward on the counterterrorism path might not be a hopeless idea.
The 30-minute conversation on May 2, reportedly initiated by Putin, was important in that it was the first since Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria’s Shayrat air base in response to the Syrian government’s alleged gas attack April 4 on its own people. The US attacks spurred criticism in Russia and revived deep-seated doubts about US cooperation on Syria and broadly in the region. Many Trump sympathizers — mostly in the Russian parliament — were embarrassed by the US action and struggled to come up with excuses for why they initially had high hopes for Trump. The sense in the Kremlin had been that Trump would gradually transform into a “normal Republican president,” with all the usual pros and cons for Moscow.
Russian and US leaders have long used such communications to convey political messages to their domestic audiences. No wonder Russian and US readouts of yesterday’s phone conversation emphasized the same aspects of the conversation differently, as if complementing one another to create a holistic picture of the talks. Although the two leaders also talked about North Korea and agreed to work jointly “in seeking diplomatic solutions to a comprehensive settlement of the problem,” their official statements made it clear that Syria was their main topic of conversation.
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