Obama and Putin to come face-to-face after 2yrs; Russia to focus on Syria while U.S. to prioritise Ukraine

The White House has confirmed that U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin are all set to meet each other next week in New York. The news of the meeting comes amid escalating tensions between the two countries regarding Syria.

Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has also confirmed the news. He said Mr Putin would be speaking at the U.N. General Assembly on Monday. After the Russian leader's speech, the meeting with his U.S. counterpart would begin and is expected to run for an hour.

Erstwhile super power Russia has shown support towards the Syrian president, while the U.S has been strongly opposing Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. Both the leaders have different priorities, which would be addressed in the meeting. In the recent past, Russia has expanded its military base in Syria, launching its first aircraft combat. This has fuelled further tensions between the countries, with the Obama administration accusing the other of helping Assad’s regime to retain power.

In response, Moscow has denied that it has been expanding its military expedition up there in order to protect its longtime ally, clarifying instead it wanted to help Assad fight the Islamic State.

It has been reported that Mr Obama will make Ukraine’s crisis a priority during talks, while Mr Putin is bent more over the Syrian crisis, in which Russia is taking an increasingly assertive position. The beginning of the conflict between the two countries dates back to the day when Russia annexed Crimea, and the U.S. announced heavy sanctions against them.

Peskov said that discussions over Ukraine conflict would only be held if time permits. But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Ukraine will be "the top item" for Obama. On Monday, Earnest said that the meeting was the result of repeated calls from Moscow’s side and emphasised that Russia's economic decline, partly a result of the U.S. sanctions, was a key concern for Putin.

Ahead of the meeting, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has urged Russia to portray its intentions for deploying more military men in Syria and hoped the country to assist U.S. in fighting their common enemy, the ISIS.

"I think the first step now is to sit down with the United States and to make clear what are [Russia's] intentions ... and to try to cooperate and give a constructive contribution to the efforts led by the United States to fight ISIL [Islamic State]," he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian officials have confirmed that Russia has been helping them to fight IS militants, who now control large parts of Syria. Syrian ambassador to Russia Riad Haddad also believe that Russia’s increasing military expedition would help Syria "finally win against terrorist groups.”

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