President Trump on Wednesday said relations between the United States and Russia “may be at an all-time low” — and darkly suggested that the situation could get worse before it gets better.
“Right now, we’re not getting along with Russia at all. 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’ll see what happens,” Trump said during a White House news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Trump said he had yet to speak with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson following Tillerson’s meetings earlier in the day with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s foreign minister.
“I think he had a very successful meeting in Russia. We’ll see. We’ll see the end result, which will be in a long period of time perhaps, but the end result is what’s most important, not just talk,” Trump said.
But the commander-in-chief also warned there are no guarantees that the poisonous relationship would improve anytime soon.
“[It would] be a fantastic thing if we got along with Putin and if we got along with Russia, and that could happen, and it may not happen or it may be just the opposite,” Trump said.
“I can only tell you what I would like to do. I would love to be able to get along with everybody.”
The United States a day earlier had accused Russia of conspiring to cover up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s April 4 chemical weapons attack on his own people.
On Friday, Trump said he didn’t know yet whether Putin had advance knowledge of the atrocity, which killed at least 87 civilians.
“It’s certainly possible. I think it’s probably unlikely, and I know they are doing investigations into that right now. I would like to think that they didn’t know, but certainly they could have. So we’ll find out,” the president said then.
Trump, who claimed during the campaign there’s no reason he and Putin couldn’t get along, insisted Wednesday he doesn’t know the Russian president.
But, Trump added, he did have a strong relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, praising the Communist country for abstaining from a UN Security Council vote condemning Syria for the chemical attacks.
Russia vetoed the measure, but Trump viewed China’s neutrality as a positive sign.
“President Xi wants to do the right thing. I think we had a very good chemistry together,” he said, adding that China will “help us with North Korea.”
Meanwhile, Trump offered a bleak analysis of the state of the world, citing the Middle East, North Korea and Ukraine — but was optimistic that problems could be solved.
“Right now, the world is a mess, but I think by the time we finish, I think it’s going to be a lot better place to live, and I can tell you that speaking for myself, by the time I’m finished, it’s going to be a lot better place to live in because right now it’s nasty,” he said.
He again defended launching 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to the attack.
“It’s vicious and violent, and everybody in this room saw it all too much over the last three or four days, young children dying, babies dying, fathers holding children in their arms that were dead. That’s a butcher. That’s a butcher. I have absolutely no doubt we did the right thing,” Trump said.
The news conference came after a tense day in Russia, with Putin ripping the US.
Tillerson returned fire — slamming Assad for using chemical weapons at least 50 times during his reign, and Russia’s support for its longtime ally.
“This is just the latest in a series of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime,” Tillerson said during a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
He cited Syria’s “use in more than 50 occasions of chlorine bombs, cluster bombs and other types of weapons that are intended to maim and kill in the most horrific ways.”
The news conference came shortly after Tillerson huddled behind closed doors for two hours at the Kremlin with Putin for what he called “productive talks” while admitting, “There is a low level of trust between our two countries.”
He described that as a dangerous state of affairs.
“The world’s two foremost nuclear powers can’t have this relationship,” Tillerson warned.
Putin, in an interview with state-run television shortly after Tillerson and Lavrov kicked off their meeting, said relations between the two nations have eroded.
“It can be said that the level of trust at the working level, especially at the military level, has not become better but most likely has degraded,” Putin said.
With Post wires