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US-Russia relations at a low, says Tillerson at Moscow press conference US-Russia relations at a low, says Tillerson after meeting with Putin
(about 1 hour later)
US-Russia relations are at a low and marked by distrust, America’s top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, has said, after a day of talks in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, emerged from a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to warn that relations between the two world’s foremost nuclear powers had hit a low.
Tillerson had flown to Russia in an attempt to push Moscow towards the US position on Syria, but Lavrov said the two sides still “diverged” over their evaluation of last week’s chemical attack on a rebel-held town. Tillerson’s two-hour audience with Putin in the Kremlin led to the removal of the most immediate threat of escalation, as Putin “reaffirmed” the maintenance of a hotline between the two countries’ militaries to avoid midair collisions between their aircraft operating in Syrian airspace.
Tillerson, who also met the Russian president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, told a joint press conference with Lavrov: “The current state of US-Russian relations is at a low point. There’s a low level of trust between our two countries … The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this sort of relationship.” America’s top diplomat said the two countries had agreed to create a working group to find solutions to “smaller problems” so that they could then concentrate on bigger issues.
On Syria, Tillerson said the US was confident in its assessment that the regime used chemical weapons in last week’s bombing of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province, and alleged that it had used such weapons more than 50 times in the past. Last week’s attack prompted Washington to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian air base. But as he sat alongside his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at a press conference, it was clear that fundamental differences between the US and Russia on Syria and beyond remained very much in place.
Lavrov said a UN chemical weapons watchdog must conduct an “objective and unbiased probe” into the chemical attack, and that Russia had no intention to “shield anyone”. “I expressed the view that the current state of US-Russian relations is at a low point,” Tillerson said. “The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship.”
But he reaffirmed Moscow’s view that the Syrian government wasn’t responsible. Moscow has insisted that the civilians who died were killed by toxic agents released from a rebel chemical arsenal struck by Syrian warplanes. Tillerson stuck to the Trump administration insistence that a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people last week in Syria was the work of Bashar al-Assad, and that the Syrian president could play no part in the country’s long-term future.
Tillerson said he did not discuss changes in sanctions against Russia during his meeting with Lavrov. Donald Trump’s repeated campaign calls for improving relations with Russia had led to speculation that Washington might remove or dilute sanctions imposed against Russia for its interference in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea. “The perspective from the US is supported by facts we have that are conclusive that the chemical attack was planned and directed and executed by Syrian regime forces,” Tillerson said, adding that the “reign of the Assad family is coming to an end” and “Russia perhaps has the best means of helping the Assad regime recognise this reality”.
The news conference came after Putin met Tillerson for almost two hours. Putin, too, cast US-Russia relations in a negative light, telling Russian TV: “You can say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military side, has not improved but most likely worsened.” Russia later vetoed a UN security resolution put forward by the US, the UK and France calling for chemical weapons inspectors to be allowed to investigate chemical weapons attacks and for the Syrian regime to hand over air force flight logs and other operational details from 4 April, the day of the Khan Sheikhun attack. It was Russia’s eighth veto on a resolution putting pressure on the Assad regime. China abstained, while ten council members voted for it.
The men know each other well from Tillerson’s days as Exxon Mobil CEO. Putin had even granted Tillerson a friendship honour. On Ukraine, Tillerson said US sanctions on Russia for its military intervention there would stay in place, and on Russian interference in the US presidential election, he said Moscow’s role was “well established”.
More details soon … Lavrov disagreed with him on every point.
As to Syria’s political future, Lavrov said Russia was not “making a bet on one person or another, including Assad”, but said the “fate of Syria should be decided by Syrians themselves”.
Lavrov went on to say the US and its allies had failed to learn from the past and still clung to their ambitions to topple leaders they saw as dictators, a policy that had led to disaster elsewhere.
“We’ve already gone through such experiments based on the need to overthrow some dictator or authoritarian leader,” he said. “I don’t know of any positive examples of removing a dictator.”
Tillerson was the first member of the Trump administration to meet Putin. The meeting followed a day of public uncertainty over whether the meeting would take place, although US officials had been confident that it would eventually happen
The two men had friendly ties when Tillerson was in his previous job as head of the ExxonMobil oil company and Putin had bestowed the Russia Order of Friendship on the Texan.
Unusually for the Russian president, he did not keep Tillerson waiting at the Kremlin before starting the meeting, which lasted two hours.
Asked about allegations of Russian hacking during the US election, Tillerson suggested additional sanctions on Moscow could be adopted only if Russia interfered again in the future. “That is a fairly well-established, serious issue, it’s one we know is serious enough to attract additional sanctions,” he said. “We are mindful of it in the future and Russia I think is mindful of it.”
The Kremlin talks took place at a point where US-Russian relations appeared to have hit a crisis over Syria, following the chemical weapons attack, which the US said was carried out by the Assad regime using sarin nerve agent, and a punitive US missile strike on a Syrian air force base three days later.
A former US official involved in relations with Russia over Syria, said that Russia had overstated its public outrage over the US missile strike, which it may well have welcomed as a way of restraining Assad, over whom Moscow has limited control.
“How are they going to stop him [using chemical weapons]? You would have to be ready to walk away,” the former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“If Putin walks away, how does he justify the casualties Russia has suffered if you’re not on the side of the angels, fighting terrorists. It’s hard enough in a democracy to admit you were wrong. Once you are in and your reputation is tied up with your client, then the client, Assad, has leverage over Putin.”
As Tillerson was meeting Putin and Lavrov in Moscow, representatives of the two countries exchanged slights at the UN security council before Russia wielded its veto.
“To my colleagues from Russia – you are isolating yourselves from the international community every time one of Assad’s planes drop another barrel bomb on civilians and every time Assad tries to starve another community to death,” the US envoy, Nikki Haley, said.
“It is long past time for Russia to stop covering for Assad ... and to push for peace,” Haley said.
The Russian deputy envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, called the US salvo of 59 cruise missiles which hit the regime base in Shayrat a “provocation” which would only provide encouragement to those seeking a military solution to the conflict.
Even in the bearpit of the security council, however, the US and Russian envoys pulled their punches, compared with the raw exchanges of recent days.
Haley focused most of her comments at Iran, which she called “Assad’s chief accomplice”. Safronkov meanwhile, reserved his fiercest disdain for the UK envoy Matthew Rycroft, who had said that UK scientists had determined that sarin had been used in the Khan Sheikhun attack and called on Russia to cut ties with Assad, who Rycroft said was bringing Moscow only “shame and humiliation”.
Safronkov demanded Rycroft look him in the face while he berated the British diplomat. “I cannot accept that you insult Russia,” he shouted.
In a move that is likely to deepen the divisions with Moscow, Donald Trump put aside his past disparagement for Nato as he prepared to meet the pact’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg.
Trump “has been very firm that he is 100% committed to Nato”, a White House official said, a position “probably reinforced by everything that Russia is doing”.
The official stressed that Trump’s talk with Stoltenberg is a broad “Russia discussion” and in particular to continue to insist that Russia upholds its commitment under the Minsk accord on resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which would require Russia to withdraw its forces before receiving any kind of sanctions relief.
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