So for example when the Kremlin announced Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be meeting with Tillerson, it caused a commotion: Was Mr. Putin underscoring his condemnation of the U.S. airstrike, or was he instead expressing doubts that Tillerson comes to Moscow speaking for Trump - in which case he doesn't merit the Russian president's time? -Russian relations are in the "most hard period since the Cold War".
Mr Tillerson said he wanted to understand why US-Russia differences exist.
USA president Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about the quality of the US's own intelligence, particularly when it comes to chemical weapons.
Alfano said the G7 did not want to put Russian Federation in a corner, but rather sought a constructive relationship with Moscow.
For the moment, Mr Tillerson is not ready to consider imposing further sanctions and is keen to keep communication lines with Russian Federation.
Tillerson spoke after a meeting of the "likeminded" countries was hastily arranged on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of Seven industrialized economies in Italy, days after the US for the first time launched airstrikes against Assad's forces.
Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that it hoped for "productive talks".
In an ominous start to their meeting, Lavrov said it was important for Moscow to understand the "real intentions" of the Trump administration. "This is simply counterproductive", ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in remarks aired on the Internet news site TVDozhd. Washington further claimed that Russian Federation had advance knowledge of the chemical strike - an assertion that Moscow denied.
Putin has angrily rejected the accusations against Damascus and slammed the USA bombing as "a violation of worldwide law".
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Russian President Vladimir Putin, in excerpts of an interview to be broadcast in full on Russian television later Wednesday, argued that there is no proof Assad's forces carried out the attack and called the USA strikes a breach of worldwide law.
It's unbelievable that 59 Tomahawk missiles can make us forget that everyone from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to campaign operative-turned-Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in contact with the Russians while Russian hackers allegedly were working to help Trump win. -Russian relations was lower now than it had been under the Obama administration.
"One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved, but rather has deteriorated", Putin said Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The high-stakes talks between Tillerson and Lavrov come less than a week after the USA launched the airstrikes, triggering a deterioration in ties between the two governments.
Tillerson and Lavrov talked for more than two hours before breaking for lunch.
Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin, without offering any detailed evidence, insisted that rebels had chemical weapons, and were likely to use them to try to get the United States to strike Syria again.
"There is a certain possibility", Peskov told state-run TASS agency.
Eric Trump, the president's son, told the Daily Telegraph that the cruise missile attack on Syria proved that his dad won't be "pushed around" by Vladimir Putin.
"The Syrian regime and its primary backer, Russia, have sought to confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks", a declassified four-page report distributed to reporters by the National Security Council finds.
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