Kremlin media gloated over the official leaders’ photo, which showed U.S. President Barack Obama looking intently as Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were in close conversation.
Putin held a series of meetings at the sidelines of the summit, including one with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who had been snubbed by Obama. The U.S. president refused to shake the Egyptian leader’s hand.
In contrast, at their all-smiles meeting, Putin and Sisi agreed to restore regular flights between their countries and other measures.
The meeting with Sisi, as well as the warm images with Erdogan, show how well Putin has managed to bolster the Kremlin’s position in the Middle East in the year since Russia’s surprise intervention in Syria. The United States under Obama, by contrast, has lost direction and influence in the region.
And before the G20 Summit had even begun, Putin nixed a Normandy format meeting among France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had been hoping would be held on the sidelines at Hangzhou.
Putin ruled out that meeting after the Kremlin claimed (falsely, it appears) that Kyiv was using “terror tactics” by planning subversive attacks in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Two Russian soldiers were reported to have been killed in incidents on the border between mainland Ukraine and the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula in early August, but no firm details are known.
Putin’s response to the claimed incidents was not only to scrap the Normandy meeting, but to resurrect the old Kremlin propaganda canard that the Ukrainian authorities illegitimately came to power in a coup, thus attempting to undermine Kyiv’s authority ahead of further talks about Ukraine.
But Putin didn’t get his way on Ukraine in Hangzhou.
While the Kremlin earlier said Putin planned to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande together to discuss Ukraine, he ended up meeting the German and French leaders separately.
And while Putin did meet with his U.S. counterpart Obama, he seems to have gained little from the encounter: A photo of Obama towering and glowering over the Russian leader, who is meeting the U.S. president’s stare coldly, illustrates the current state of distrust between the White House and the Kremlin.
No doubt to Putin’s chagrin, Merkel, Hollande and Obama held their own meeting to discuss Ukraine. Moreover, the United States on Sept. 1 and on Sept. 6 announced fresh sanctions on Russia due to its continued occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and aggression in the Donbas, while the European Union looks set to prolong its existing sanctions – the deadline for a decision on prolonging them is set for Sept. 15, and despite a Kremlin diplomatic offensive in the southern and eastern states of the EU, the union’s unanimity on the issue appears to be holding for now.
Although the details of the discussions between Putin and Western leaders on Ukraine are not known, they may have caused Putin to pirouette on the issue of the Normandy format meetings.
At a news conference at the end of the Hangzhou summit, Putin declared that Russia would return to the Normany format talks, saying “whether they are good or bad, there are still no other initiatives to regulate the conflict.” Putin also said he would be prepared to communicate with Poroshenko again, saying “we will probably have to.”
This came only weeks after Putin described the Normandy format meetings as “pointless” in the wake of the alleged Ukrainian “planned terror attacks” on the Russian occupied Crimean peninsula.
That Russia is prepared to back down on the issue of the Normandy format talks could be read as a failure for Putin, who takes every opportunity to blame Kyiv for the ongoing stalemate in implementing the Minsk II agreements to end Kremlin’s war against Ukraine, and who has sought to drive a wedge between Ukraine and its Western allies. The Russian president’s tactic for driving in that wedge appears to be to offer “cooperation” with the West in Syria in exchange for concessions on the issue of sanctions and Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea: Thus, his attempt to freeze Kyiv out of ongoing negotiations about Ukraine.
For now, that tactic has failed – the Western leaders refused to play Putin’s alternative game, and have forced him back to the Normandy table.
So while the Russian leader’s busy schedule of meetings and photo ops at the G20 Summit may have looked good in the Russian papers, Putin failed to achieve his goals on Ukraine and may even have been forced back a step or two.
In that regard, G20 looks like a loss for Putin.
