Barack Obama Rushes to Get to Know Vladimir Putin

At the end of May, an urgent U.S.-Russia summit may take place at Camp David.

The U.S. has offered to hold a bilateral summit with Russia a few days after Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced it on Friday.

Vladimir Vladimirovich has already confirmed his participation at the G8 Summit at Camp David in May. Washington wants to hold a separate U.S.-Russia meeting regarding this subject, said Lavrov.

U.S. President Barack Obama would like to talk about nuclear weapons reductions during his meeting with Putin. According to Lavrov, however, a U.S- Russian agreement on missile defense system is “not looming yet.”

“We are going to make sure that our interests are fully respected,” said Lavrov.

Figuratively speaking, the U.S. president and his administration want to probe Putin because he has been weird and unpredictable in comparison to President Medvedev, says a leading expert of the Center for Political Studies, Maxim Minaev.

The White House is trying to understand how ready the re-elected Russian president is for a pragmatic dialogue with the United States. During his campaign speeches, Putin stated his readiness to protect Russian national interests and to increase defense capabilities. Obama hopes to understand to what extent this talk agrees with his real position.

The U.S. leader has an additional reason to keep relations with Moscow. It’s highly important for him to demonstrate during his mounting electoral campaign that the “rebooting” will be continued and that there will be no confrontation.

Obama has already made a few obvious reverences for Putin, says Minaev. First, he announced the venue change for the G8 summit, from Chicago to Camp David. During these four days in May two major summits were to take place in Chicago: the G8 on May 18-19 and the NATO on May 20-21. Putin, however, refused to participate at the NATO summit. If these two meetings were not separated, world leaders would watch him leaving Chicago. Secondly, President Obama has offered to hold a U.S.-Russian meeting immediately, even though he knows that it is likely to be just familiarizing.

The main point of this meeting is to build relations between the leaders of the two states, says chairman of the Russian Duma’s International Affairs Committee, Alexey Pushkov.

According to Pushkov, a wide range of problems like bilateral relations, Syria, Iran and the missile defense system will be discussed at the summit. Probably, they will also talk about modernization of Russian economy with the help of U.S. companies. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, however, that they will raise the question of Victor Bout.