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This has been the biggest offensive attack against the wannabe caliphate of ISIS as Kerry met with President For-As-Long-As-He-Wants-To-Be Putin under better circumstances than the time when Hillary Clinton presented Russia's Sergey Lavrov with a "Restart Button" that actually said "overcharged." (After Hillary's screwup, Russia went on to annex Crimea, then fomented unrest in eastern Ukraine, and flaunted their military strength agains NATO alliance states.)
But the atmosphere between Putin and Kerry seemed peaceful perhaps due to Kerry's close ties to communism. Both men came away as comrades sharing the same hope for progress in ending the fighting in Syria, President Obama aside.
Russia is Assad's main ally while the U.S. and other Western countries have supported troops trying to overthrow the weak-chin dictator. This civil war has been dragging on for five years and in that time, about 259,000 people have been killed and this has led to the world's worst refugee crisis.
Last year, Russia flew scores of air strikes to help Assad's government. When Obama realized that Putin wasn't bluffing about his role with Syria, he knew it was best to try making a peace deal with the stronger Russian leader. The two countries held the first real ceasefire of the war and began negotiations between the warring parties.
Putin has recently announced that he is winding down military action in Syria and offered warm, somewhat tender words for Barack Obama.
"We understand that what we have been able to achieve on Syria has been possible only thanks to the position of the U.S. top political leadership, President Obama," Putin joked, at a meeting with Kerry. "I very much hope that your visit will allow us to bring our positions closer on moving forward to solve the Syrian crisis and . . . on Ukraine."And then Sergey Lavrov presented Kerry with a button in Cyrillic that read: пресса при испуге which translates to: "Press when frightened."
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