Trump had been eager to improve relations with Moscow and often expressed confidence that his ability to bond with Putin would ease friction between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s role in Syria and its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
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In late March, CNN even ran a story with the headline: “Trump’s White House is starting to look a lot like Putin’s Kremlin”.
The rhetorical salvos came as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson received an unusually hostile reception in Moscow. “There hasn’t been a single fact, although under the pressure of President Donald Trump’s foes the White House has been forced to periodically make statements containing unfounded accusations against us”.
Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should both visit the Syrian air base, which the USA said had served as a platform for the attack, and the town of Khan Sheikhoun that was hit to get a full and objective picture.
The Russian veto came after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared following talks in Moscow that there was a “low level of trust” between the US and Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the United States’ military assault on a Syrian airfield, saying that the USA move represents an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of worldwide law under a far-fetched pretext. The Kremlin had previously declined to confirm Putin would meet Tillerson, reflecting the renewed tensions.
Lavrov also said Russian Federation expects the U.S.to take part in a meeting on Afghanistan this week.
“The world’s two primary nuclear powers can not have this kind of relationship”, he said.
Trumps comments come less than a week after he ordered missile strikes on a Syrian airfield after US evidence indicated that Assad killed civilians using the nerve agent sarin. This has built for a long period of time.
And shortly afterwards, Russian Federation vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have demanded Syrian cooperation on the investigation.
Equally remarkable was Trump’s uninhibited praise for the leader of China, a country he railed against during the campaign for ripping off the U.S. And what has Russian Federation got in return for its seven vetoes in six years?
“It’s the greatest upheaval I would say in the region that we’ve seen since the collapse of the Ottoman empire and people need to realize that”. NATO Trump says NATO is not obsolete, as he had declared on the campaign trail a year ago, but that alliance members still need to pay their fair share for the security umbrella.
Russian Federation also vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation of the chemical attack, saying that Moscow had expressed its “categorical disagreement” with the draft resolution, which led to further criticism from the West, including the US. A pragmatic, transactional relationship, he added, “is the best we can hope for”.
Mr Tillerson said there was no doubt that the attack had been planned and executed by the Syrian regime, which has used chlorine bombs on more than 50 occasions.
Putin told Russian TV in an interview Wednesday that under Trump, the relationship between Washington and Moscow had “worsened”.
“I think it’s certainly possible”. “I do not know who saw them. That could happen, and it may not happen, It may be just the opposite”, Trump said.
Trudeau’s preference for multilateral co-operation on worldwide issues and affinity for the United Nations is well known, so Juneau said it was no surprise Trudeau’s initial response to the attack was to press the UN to investigate.
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Finally, the New York Times reports that Trump’s rapidly changing positions on Syria, Russia, and a host of other global issues are giving leaders around the world “geopolitical whiplash”. They were there. So we’ll find out.
