Trump officials tell Russia to drop its support for Syria’s Assad

Officials in the Trump administration on Sunday demanded that Russia stop supporting the Syrian government or face a further deterioration in its relations with the United States.

Signaling the focus of talks that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to have in Moscow this week, officials said that Russia, in propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, bears at least partial responsibility for Tuesday’s chemical attack on villagers in Idlib province.

“I hope Russia is thinking carefully about its continued alliance with Bashar al-Assad, because every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility,” Tillerson said on ABC’s “This Week.”

In advance of Tillerson’s arrival, the Kremlin said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to meet with the secretary of state.

“We have not announced any meetings. A meeting with Tillerson is currently not on the president’s schedule,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.

The U.S, ambassador to Russia, John Teft, had said last month that Tillerson would likely meet Putin “in the near future,” according to the Associated Press.

 

Read the whole story from The Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of The Hill