The US response - 59 Tomahawk missiles fired the airbase from which the chemical-weapons attack was supposedly launched - appears to signal a shift in policy under President Trump, who said that it was "in the vital national security interest of the US to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons".
As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after emerging from a almost two-hour meeting with Putin, "there is a low level of trust between our two countries".
On April 4, a reported toxic gas attack hit the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria's Idlib, killing over 80 people and wounding scores of others.
Russian Federation on Wednesday vetoed a United Nations resolution that would have required Bashar al-Assad's government to co-operate with worldwide inquiries into last week's chemical attack in Syria.
It was the latest sharp split between the United States and Russian Federation over the incident, which has deepened antagonism between the two countries in the wake of the attack.
"Clearly, our view is that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end", Tillerson said.
In Paris, French President Francois Hollande said: "Russia bears a heavy responsibility" by systematically opposing multilateral action to protect its Syrian ally Assad.
She said that "the United States, the United Kingdom and France" submitted the resolution because no one should have to endure the horrors of a chemical attack.
After President Donald Trump's recent unilateral strikes on Syria, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is plotting to ensure Congress votes on future USA military action in the Middle Eastern country.
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Russian Federation believes that Damascus made a right decision to invite experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate into the Idlib incident.
"I don't remember a case of a dictator being removed smoothly without violence", said Lavrov, lamenting past efforts to remove Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia, Saddam Hussein from Iraq, and Moammar Gadhafi from Libya. "This is why I would like to thank Russian Federation for preventing attempts to use the UN Security Council to carry out an aggression against Syria".
The House passed legislation late a year ago to slap new sanctions on anyone who provides financial, material or technological support to the Syrian government, a category that would include Russian Federation.
Trump said in a Fox Business interview this week, "We're not going into Syria". He added ominously, "The world's two foremost nuclear powers can not have this kind of relationship".
The war led to the emergence of the Islamic State jihadist group, which seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014 but has since lost much of its territory.
During Tillerson's visit to Moscow on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave the top USA diplomat an earful of criticism over the US strike.
"I think he fundamentally doesn't understand the nature of the Russia-China relationship", she said, describing it as pragmatic.
The US State Department said Thursday that it amounted to a "war crime".
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