Moscow: After US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson waited for much of the day, wondering whether he would get to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two men sat down at the Kremlin late on Wednesday afternoon in the first official face-to-face meeting between Russia and the Trump administration.
Relations between the US and Russia have grown so tense that it was unclear whether Mr Putin would agree to see Mr Tillerson, a man he once gave a medal of friendship. The Kremlin earlier this week had said Mr Putin would not greet Mr Tillerson on his first official trip to Moscow. Mr Tillerson was to meet his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
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Tillerson: Assad family reign 'coming to an end'
Speaking at a joint press conference in Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for an end to the Assad regime following the deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria last week.
In the 24 hours before Mr Tillerson landed, the White House accused Russia of covering up evidence that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for sarin gas attacks on its own people, launched from a base where Russian troops are operating.
But daylong talks between the two top diplomats failed to bridge disputes over Syria and other key issues.
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But the diplomatic theatre playing out was far from boring: Mr Putin, operating on home turf, was looking for any way to shape the narrative of Mr Tillerson's first visit as secretary of state.
The outcome could well decide whether Mr Trump's oft-stated desire to remake US relations with Moscow will now disintegrate, just as similar efforts by Barack Obama did early in his presidency.
Russian leaders have greeted virtually all new secretaries of state since the end of World War II, but Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov said any meeting would depend on how Tillerson's other talks went. The drama appeared to be an effort by Putin to show that he was in control.
Critics of the Trump administration insist that the series of events around the attack in Syria had been meant to distract from the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Little concrete appeared to emerge from the meeting, although Mr Lavrov said later that "we understand each other better" and he saw "many prospects for cooperation," including a possible resumption of arms control talks.
He said Moscow would put "back in force" a telephone hotline used to keep US and Russian warplanes from colliding or accidentally firing at one another in the crowded skies over Syria. Russian officials said last week the hotline has been suspended.
The high-level meetings in Moscow came as Mr Trump continued a week of flip-flops in which he has jettisoned large chunks of the foreign policy - and significant pieces of economic policy - that he espoused as he ran for the presidency.
Trump, who repeatedly praised Putin during last year's campaign, told a White House news conference it would be "a fantastic thing if we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia."
"Right now we're not getting along with Russia at all," Trump added. "We may be at an all-time low in terms of relationship with Russia. This has built for a long period of time. But we're going to see what happens."
Putin also warned of worsening ties in a TV interview in Moscow.
"You can say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military side, has not improved but most likely worsened", Mr Putin said.
In a day of fast-moving diplomacy, Russia vetoed a US-backed motion at the United Nations Security Council that would have required Dr Assad's government to cooperate with UN investigators looking into the April 4 nerve-gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town.
New York Times, Tribune
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