(EDM) The meeting of three presidents—Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani—in Sochi last Wednesday (November 22), was supposed to mark a triumph for Russian foreign policy. But instead, the trilateral summit sent confusing signals and left mixed feelings. A day before the get-together, Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad arrived in Russia; Putin was photographed giving al-Assad a friendly hug, and the Kremlin leader introduced his guest to the Russian top brass (Kommersant, November 22). After that, Putin made a series of phone calls to brief the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel about his plan to hold a conference of parties to the war in Syria, in Sochi. The most important call, however, was to President of the United States Donald Trump, particularly because their recent non-meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam (see EDM, November 6, 9), had left Putin bitterly upset (Moskovsky Komsomolets, November 10). […]
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