of this meeting kind of emerged. they re shown to be very close, the photograph shows the two men hugging each other, treating each other with a hug. and so they obviously want to put across this idea that there is this close, personal relationship between the two, and in the past there have been tensions between the russian and syrian leadership. and what they discussed, according to the kremlin readout of the meeting, is how the syrian conflict moved from being a military operation, and now focusing on a political solution to the conflict. so it s that point which the two leaders were discussing things. very interesting timing. matthew chance joining us from moscow. thank you very much. of course, donald trump, the u.s. president, will speak with vladamir putin later on tuesday. we shall see when we get details from that call. it will be interesting from
this phone call, as matthew pointed out. it was not in the white house readout of the phone call they agreed to meet. and if you look at the kremlin readout of the phone call, they talked about maybe meeting on the sidelines of the g20 summit in germany. and everything i was hearing from moscow was, we got to get this meeting in before july. they have to meet one-on-one. have that real chemical connection. and that s not going to happen. he has to meet with him on the sidelines of this big conference, just like everybody else. his short attention span is going to be pulled in all different directions. it s unclear how much impact a one-on-one meeting in that context with putin will have. it makes you wonder where this relationship is now with putin and president trump and russia and the united states. we re so far 103 days into this administration into trump s presidency.
lift sanctions and lift himself from the internal political mess where they re holding him down. as matthew correctly pointed out, it was not in the white house readout that they agreed to meet and further more if you look at the kremlin readout, it just says they talked about maybe meeting on the sidelines of the g20 summit in july in germany. and everything i was hearing from moscow was we got to get this meeting in before july. have that real chemical connection and that s not going to happen. his already short attention span is going to be pulled in too many directions.
have been talking, what has been the result of that? every time there was a phone call between obama and putin, you read the kremlin readout of the call t. was about one thing, you read the white house s readout and it s a whole different thing. when the russians want to resume the conversation, they will pick up the phone and get that going. it s a little bit of posturing designed to talk about further financial sanctions on russia which even though relatively modest are having an impact. you ve heard of other even countries that haven t imposed sanctions yet that their bankers and other dealers are pulling back because they are worried the situation is going to get worse. if you re a western ceo, you re probably not going to your board of directors saying i want to make an investment in russia. and what is interesting,
there s talk of establishing safe zones, something the president talked about and halt the flown of paying rants coming out of syria. we also talked about the situation in north korea and according to the kremlin readout, both men talked about meeting at the g-20 summit coming up in hamburg, germany, july 7th and 8. that would be their first face-to-face meetings, and we should also point out that while it does not appear they talked about this during that phone call, i spoke to a senior administration official who was quoted as saying the russian federation has never meldled in foreign elections and this administration just doesn t believe it when vladimir putin says things like that, but that they don t want to get into a, quote, tit for tat with vladimir