CABINET/RUSSIA/STATE/TRUMP PEOPLE/REX TILLERSON: “Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for nearly two hours Wednesday [4-12-17], but the two men appeared unable to agree on the facts involving the deadly chemical weapons assault on Syrian civilians or Russian interference in the American election — much less move toward an improvement in basic relations.
‘There is a low level of trust between our countries,’ Mr. Tillerson told reporters at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, after the first face-to-face meetings between Russian leaders and a top emissary of the Trump administration.
‘The world’s two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship,’ Mr. Tillerson said.
Both he and Mr. Lavrov said a range of issues were discussed — most notably the crises in Syria, North Korea and Ukraine — and that both sides had agreed to establish a working group to examine, as Mr. Lavrov said, ‘the irritants’ in relations between the United States and Russia.”
-David E. Sanger, “Tillerson and Putin Find Little More Than Disagreement in Meeting,” The New York Times online, April 12, 2017