PUTIN ON THE SPLIT
RUSSIA-U.S. TIES DAMAGED
SECRETARY OF STATE Tillerson met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in an attempt to defuse tensions over the Syrian crisis — but the top U.S. diplomat admitted the relationship with Russia remains “at a low point.”
Tillerson’s honest assessment of the situation reflected the former Cold War foes’ inability to work together since President Trump ordered air strikes on Syria.
The strikes came after Syrian leader Bashar Assad, an ally of Russia, had gassed his own people, many of them women and children.
“There is a low level of trust between our two countries,” Tillerson told reporters in Moscow. “The world’s two foremost nuke powers cannot have this kind of relationship.”
Following a day of discussions, Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said their only mutual interest in the region was to defeat ISIS.
Aside from the ongoing crisis in Syria, both acknowledged that they have conflicting goals on a rash of critical issues, including Russian involvement in Ukraine and its meddling in the recent U.S. election.
Hours later, Trump — in a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Washington — echoed Tillerson’s comments, telling reporters that “we’re not getting along with Russia at all.”
Tillerson and Lavrov maintained a diplomatic tone during their own joint news conference, but the growing tensions following the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base last Thursday in retaliation for Assad’s sarin gas attack were crystal-clear.
Tillerson suggested war crimes charges could be levied against
Assad and repeated the White House’s belief that “the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end.”
The exchange between the two was even more acrid earlier in the day, during their one-on-one, when Lavrov called the U.S. retaliatory strike “unlawful.”
He also accused the Trump administration of making statements that were “very ambiguous” and “contradictory.”
The U.S has said it has definitive intelligence showing the Assad regime was responsible for the planning and execution of the chemical attack. Russia has maintained the attack was either carried out by Syrian rebels or caused by warplanes hitting a rebel chemical weapons facility.
In one of the few items of agreement during Wednesday’s meetings with Tillerson, Lavrov said he would consent to a United Nations-led probe of the attack.
But shortly after the meeting, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the use of chemical weapons in Syria and urging a speedy investigation, saying it objected to language requiring Syria to provide investigators with flight plans and information about air operations on the day of the attack.
Following his meeting with Lavrov, Tillerson met with Putin in a surprise sitdown that wasn’t formally confirmed until the last minute.
Putin and Tillerson knew each other previously from Tillerson’s days as ExxonMobil CEO, with the Russian leader even granting the former oil exec a friendship honor.
Hours before Tillerson’s visit, Putin ripped into the White House.
“It can be said that the level of trust at the working level, especially at the military level, has not become better but most likely has degraded,” Putin said in an interview broadcast Wednesday by state television channel Mir.
Putin claimed Syria had complied with an agreement to dispose of chemical weapons “so far as we know.”