Putin ready to work with U.S. on resolving Syrian conflict
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said he was prepared to work more closely with the United States and its next president to resolve Syria's 4-year-old civil war.
Putin said he was convinced Washington was prepared to "move toward settling the issues that can only be settled through joint efforts."
The two countries are at odds over the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a longtime Russian ally who Putin supports. President Obama, however, has called for Assad to step down as the first move toward a political solution for the war.
On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will host a United Nations Security Council meeting on the conflict.
The Russian leader was speaking in Moscow as part of his end-of-year news conference for Russian and international press. The annual event held since 2008 is known for its wide-ranging and often colorful comments by the president. Thursday's conference lasted over three hours.
Putin said Russia and the U.S. were in agreement that any solution in Syria must be a political one. "There is a plan and it coincides with the American plan," he said, before noting that both the U.S. and Russia favored drafting a new Syrian constitution and elections.
He said Russia supports a U.S. initiative for the United Nations Security Council to prepare a resolution on Syria, but that his country's military involvement in Syria — where the U.S. says accuses it of bombing American-backed rebel groups as well as the Islamic State — would continue until a political process was underway.
Putin said he was prepared to work with whomever wins November's U.S. presidential election and believed Republican hopeful Donald Trump to be the "absolute front-runner." He also said that the billionaire was a "very colorful, talented person." Trump has previously said he would back Putin "100%" on Syria.
Still, there was considerable divergence.
“We aren’t going to be more Syrian than the Syrians themselves,” Putin said, referring to Russia's belief that only Syrians should determine their next leader. That contrasts with the position of the U.S. and its allies who maintain that Assad needs to step aside in order for a legitimate political process to take place.
Putin also had new, sharp words for Turkey as its dispute with Ankara over a downed Russian jet near the Syrian border showed no signs of abating. "Turkey had decided," Putin said, to "lick the Americans in a certain place," a reference to Turkey's decision to first consult with NATO rather than Russia over the incident.
"I can imagine that certain agreements were reached at some level that they would down a Russian plane, while the U.S. closes its eyes to Turkish troops entering Iraq, and occupying it. I don’t know if there was such an exchange. We don’t know. But whatever happened, they’ve put everyone in a bind," Putin said.
On Ukraine, Putin maintained Russia's consistent, but disputed line that it had no regular troop presence in eastern parts of the country but he also appeared to concede for the first time that "some military tasks" were being performed, although he did not elaborate.
"We never said there were no people (in Ukraine) who were carrying out certain tasks," he said.