Russia rejects demand that it abandon Syrian leader Assad

Moscow

RUSSIA pushed back against demands that it abandon Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad over a chemical weapons attack as the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin is likely to meet US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Mr Putin complained that relations with the US are worse than under former president Barack Obama, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the Trump administration's "ambiguous and contradictory" foreign policy at the start of talks with Mr Tillerson in Moscow on Wednesday.

There's a "probabilit…