Putin yields little to Obama's demands

The Kremlin emphasized that it was President Barack Obama who called President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 22 in order to discuss security for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games as well as the Syrian civil war and the negotiations about Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

The conversation was commanding and beseeching on Obama’s part, according to my sources. Putin was polite but stern and reserved, in the Chekist style.  

On Sochi, Obama offered technical assistance by the FBI and other agencies in order to foil terrorist threats to the Olympics by jihadists associated with the Caucasus Emirate. The threats are not speculative; they represent the vengeance of the Chechen wars. An Islamist website presented two men of the Salafist Salayat Dagestan who claimed that they launched the Volgograd ‘martyr’ attacks recently and boast of more at Sochi.

Putin did not refuse Obama’s offer outright, but my sources report that the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) thinks of U.S. technical assistance as a cyber–Trojan horse to invade Russian communications. The FSB may accept some U.S. hardware out of politeness. However, after the Boston Marathon bomber fiasco with the troubled Caucasian Tsarnaev family, the Kremlin regards U.S. security as clumsy, nosy and ignorant.

On Syria, Obama was blunt on the eve of the Geneva 2 negotiations: He directed Putin not only to help force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally, out of power but also to oblige Assad to surrender himself to the International Criminal Court in the Hague to face war-crime charges. Obama also insisted that Putin help install Ahmad Asi al-Jarba, the Syrian National Coalition leader, in Damascus and persuade Iran to go along with U.S. demands. 

Putin responded sardonically, my sources report, by saying that Assad has fought for two years against terrorists who are hirelings of the U.S. and its surrogates such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey and that it is unlikely Assad will surrender now that he has won on the battlefield.

Putin’s rejoinder has proved accurate, as the U.N. special representative to the talks, Lakhdar Brahimi, has described the first round as unsuccessful, saying, “We haven’t achieved anything.”

On Iran, Obama told Putin he wants Russia to assist in peacemaking with Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime. Obama expects Putin to let the U.S. gain influence in Tehran and the region and not to quibble.

The Kremlin believes, I am told, that Obama has gone so far down the road of satisfying Iran’s demands that there is no reason to get involved with this or that detail. What Iran wants from Obama, Iran will get, including a silencing of congressional calls for stronger sanctions and a media-launched seduction of the public to support detente

Obama offered Putin the plain inducement of a meeting at the G-8 conference in June in Sochi. Putin was noncommittal, though he has reason to be irritated: The Kremlin believes that Obama is leading the political boycott of the Sochi Winter Games by refusing to attend or send a high-level representative and by naming prominent gay athletes to the U.S. delegation.

What upsets the Kremlin most of all these days, I am told, is its belief that the Obama administration is behind the troubles in Kiev.

The Kremlin maintains that the White House and perhaps the president personally are encouraging provocateurs to fund opposition leaders in Ukraine. My source mentioned George Soros. It is the Kremlin’s firm opinion that National Security Adviser Susan Rice spoke with Soros directly to encourage a fresh round of television-ready protests.

The Ukrainian troubles are the most immediately disturbing for Moscow but were said not to be part of the Wednesday telephone call.   

The Kremlin believes that the Obama White House has poked it in the eye over Kiev, my sources report. Putin is responding deftly to the disruption with money and diplomacy. For example, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich offered a place in the Cabinet to an opposition leader, and though the gesture was refused, it points to more carrot than stick in the days ahead for Ukraine.

The Kremlin believes that the Obama White House is interfering in Kiev in order to show, however messily, that the United States is still relevant in the region. The Kremlin does want Washington to pressure Georgia to behave. Other than that, the Kremlin wants the U.S. out of its squabbles in former Soviet states. In Moscow, the White House’s promising support to the Kiev demonstrators is regarded as equivalent to the FSB’s encouraging Occupy protesters.

Iran dominates Obama’s foreign policy agenda. My sources report repeatedly that Obama’s goal is a history-making rapprochement with Iran up to and including a presidential embassy to Tehran to shake the hand of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, with the blessing of Khamenei. Obama is pushing Putin to help in this grand endeavor as if he were working for the U.S. in the manner of France or Britain.

Eurasia — not the Middle East — dominates Putin’s foreign policy agenda. Since 2009 and the unsuccessful Obama reset embassy to Moscow, the Kremlin has reached a strong mutual understanding with Berlin that the future for Europe is not westward toward the old NATO fortress of the U.S. but rather eastward to the Russian Federation and its satellites, spanning two continents. Energy, security, investment and trade make up what I am told Angela Merkel and Putin call, in German and Russian, the common Eurasian home.

The U.S. is a spectator to this colloquy among Eurasian capitals, which includes Paris and London as well. This rallying of long-term interests must and will include Kiev in the Moscow camp.

After the Wednesday telephone exchange, the Kremlin emphasized that Obama called Putin, not the other way around, in order to illustrate who holds the stronger hand.