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“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, referring to an intelligence failure that Trump has also cited in recent months. “The exact same thing is happening now,” he charged.

He quoted two Russian writers, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, authors of the 1928 satire “The 12 Chairs,” and said, “ ‘It’s boring, ladies.’ We have seen this all before.”

But the diplomatic theater playing out in Moscow on a rainy Wednesday morning was far from boring: Putin, operating on home turf, was looking for any way to shape the narrative of Tillerson’s first trip here as secretary of state.

The outcome could well decide whether Trump’s oft-stated desire to remake U.S. relations with Moscow will now disintegrate, just as similar efforts by Barack Obama did early in his presidency.

Russia said earlier this week that Putin would not meet with Tillerson, but on Wednesday the Russian leader’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, held out the possibility of a meeting later in the day. Russian leaders have greeted virtually all new secretaries of state since the end of World War II, but Peskov said any meeting would depend on how Tillerson’s other talks went.

The drama appeared to be an effort by Putin to show that he was in control.

Critics of the Trump administration insist that the series of events around the attack in Syria had been meant to distract from the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.