Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met with the U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg on July 7, 2017.

The meeting of President Vladimir Putin with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit began about 20 minutes late, but lasted nearly two hours longer than it was supposed to. Behind closed doors at a Hamburg convention center, the heads of states and their top diplomats, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, spent two hours seventeen minutes instead of the originally announced 35 minutes. This in itself became a sensation.

Right after the meeting with President Trump, which was unprecedentedly long for a sidelines session, Vladimir Putin went straight in for another bilateral meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Russian leader related to his Japanese counterpart that he and the U.S. President discussed the issues of Syria, Ukraine, the fight against terrorism, and cyber security.

From the issues that they discussed, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump managed to agree on four specific points. Sergey Lavrov announced the results of the Presidents’ discussion at a short briefing after the meeting’s conclusion.

The first major point of agreement, according to the Russian Foreign Minister, was that Russia and the United States have undertaken commitments to ensure adherence to the ceasefire regime by all the groups present in Syria and also to provide humanitarian access and to establish contacts between the opposition in the region and a monitoring center set up in the capital of Jordan. In the beginning, security around this de-escalation zone will be provided by Russian military police in coordination with the U.S. and Jordan. Russia and the United States made a commitment to the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Syria and the U.N. Security Council resolution that laid the foundation for promoting a political settlement. The ceasefire in the southwestern part of Syria went into effect as of July 9. It is one of four de-escalation zones, which the parties discussed during the preceding round of inter-Syrian negotiations in Astana.

Secondly, the Presidents agreed to create a bilateral channel of communication between the representatives of Russia and the United States to advance a settlement in Ukraine on the basis of the Minsk Agreement.

“We expect that in the nearest future the representative of the United States on the Ukrainian settlement will arrive in Moscow for consultations,” Sergey Lavrov said.

Earlier the State Department announced that Kurt Volker was appointed as the United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. In his capacity, Mr. Volker will be engaged in coordinating the State Department’s efforts on settling the conflict in Ukraine.

The third agreement the leaders of the U.S. and Russia reached relates to cyber security. The Presidents have decided to form a joint bilateral working group to consider cybersecurity issues. According to Sergey Lavrov, Donald Trump used the word “strange” to describe the unsuccessful campaign to investigate Russia’s alleged intervention in the U.S. presidential elections. The Russian diplomat emphasized that President Putin assured President Trump that Russian authorities did not try to influence U.S. elections, adding further that President Trump accepted the Russian leader’s denial.

The fourth agreement was that the parties committed to accelerating the procedures necessary for appointing new ambassadors, the U.S. Ambassador in Russia and the Russian Ambassador to the U.S.

People around the world anxiously waited for the first in-person meeting of the Russian and the American Presidents. On the eve of the summit, U.S. media reported that sources within the White House and the U.S. Congress shared a new American strategy, which does not pursue the goal of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad anymore, agrees on the presence of Russian military police in the Arab country, and supports the creation of de-escalation zones. Most of these provisions in fact materialized in the agreements that the two Presidents reached. Although Rex Tillerson said that the U.S. did not see a long-term political future for Assad in Syria, the U.S. apparently committed to respecting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

While the first meeting of the Russian and the American Presidents did not remove all the problems in the relationship between the Kremlin and the White House, both Presidents have shown resolve to find solutions that will meet the national interests of Russia, the United States, and the international community.