The New Times
The past ten days have taken the U.S.-Russia relationship to a new low, as Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “collided in Syria,” this week’s Russian magazine The New Times reports.
After months of accusations that Trump and Putin were in cahoots, tensions between Washington and Moscow are suddenly running high, one week after the U.S. bombing of a Syrian military base, in a unilateral response against a chemical weapons attack the U.S. administration has blamed on the Assad regime. This week’s meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow brought no visible change.
Trump’s swift U-turn on Syria, going from “Assad can stay” to “Assad must go” in just a few days, and fears of conflict escalation between the U.S. and Russia also inspired Ukraine-based magazine Korrespondent, which portrays Trump decidedly unwilling to bury the hatchet, which bears a Syrian flag.