Russia is using Donald Trump's own words against him

pulse

April 12, 2017 7:33 PM

"We have seen it all already," said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Amanda Macias/Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken a page out of President Donald Trump's playbook by questioning the reliability of U.S. intelligence reports about chemical weapons usage in Syria.

The Trump administration has tried to force Moscow's hand with U.S. spy reports about chemical weapons being used in by the Assad regime. It also used them to justify recent missile strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad's military bases.

Trump has also accused intelligence agencies of leaking information about his associates' connections to Moscow, and blamed them for allowing an unverified dossier to be leaked. But he alsoblamed the media

"false flag"

no doubt autopsies have showed that sarin gas was used.

Russia has instead argued that the Syrian air force carried out a conventional attack that hit a chemical weapons cache controlled by the rebels. However, as chemical weapons expert Dan Kaszeta told Bellingcat, sarin in storage consists of unmixed components, and dropping a bomb on them would not turn them into a nerve agent.

"It is an infantile argument," he wrote.

U.S. would not intervenePutin said that relations with the Trump administration have "degraded." target="_blank"

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