MOSCOW — Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for more than four hours Tuesday, marking a high-profile attempt to ease tensions between Russia and the West as relations have deteriorated to their worst level since the Cold War.
The talks in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi yielded no major breakthroughs on a variety of shared concerns, including Ukraine, a nuclear deal with Iran and the Islamic State’s gains in Syria. But in strikingly warm comments after the meeting, Kerry praised Putin for having agreed to meet in the first place.
Kerry is the most senior U.S. official to visit Russia since the crisis in Ukraine started last year, rekindling antagonism reminiscent of Soviet times. But both sides appeared pleased with Tuesday’s talks, which included four additional hours of discussion between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“We rarely get to speak as honestly as we did today,” Kerry said. “This was an important visit at an important time. We didn’t come here with an expectation that we would be able to define a specific path forward with respect to one crisis or another.”
The quick trip on Tuesday appeared to be a new effort to rekindle cooperation in areas where the United States and Russia might be able to work together, even if ongoing fighting in Ukraine remains an open sore. Talks with Iran on a nuclear deal are in their final, crucial weeks. The United States and Russia fear the rise of the Islamic State, while Russia is also a major supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling a four-year-old uprising.
