Rex Tillerson met unexpectedly with Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Kremlin in Moscow on Wednesday.

A State Department official confirmed to the Daily Caller that Donald Trump’s secretary of state met with the Russian president just hours into his trip to the country this week.

There have been tensions between the two countries after the United States launched a missile attack against a Syrian air base last week. At the White House Tuesday, senior administration officials said it was clear that the Russian government is trying to cover up Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian regime’s culpability for the chemical attack in the country that left at least 80 people dead. (RELATED: White House Lays Out Evidence That Syria Was Behind Deadly Chemical Attack)

“This reminds me very much of the events of 2003, when U.S. representatives in the Security Council showed alleged chemical weapons discovered in Iraq,” Putin said in response. “The exact same thing is happening now.”

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