Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday trust had eroded between the U.S. and Russia under President Donald Trump, as Moscow delivered an unusually hostile reception to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a face-off over Syria.
Any hope in Russia that the Trump administration would herald less confrontational relations has been dashed in the past week after the new U.S. leader fired missiles at Syria to punish Moscow’s ally for its suspected use of poison gas.
“One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved but has rather deteriorated,” Mr. Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russian television moments.
Mr. Putin doubled down on Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, repeating denials that Mr. Assad’s government was to blame for the gas attack last week.
Moments earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov greeted Mr. Tillerson with unusually icy remarks, denouncing the missile strike on Syria as illegal. “I wont hide the fact that we have a lot of questions, taking into account the extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ideas which have been expressed in Washington across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral affairs,” Mr. Lavrov said.
One of Mr. Lavrov’s deputies was even more undiplomatic. “In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We’ll hope that this doesn’t become the substance of American policy,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
