Privately, Russian officials are furious with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected April 4 chemical weapons attack in Idlib province that killed over 80 people, Russia analysts said. They see it as threatening to sabotage the potential for US-Russia rapprochement ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s first visit to Moscow this week.

“You know the interesting thing, Chuck, is when this chemical weapons murder happened to so many people, Russia’s reaction was not ‘oh how horrible’ or ‘how could they do this to innocent children’ or ‘how awful is that,’” Haley told Chuck Todd of NBC's "Meet the Press" on April 9. “Their initial reaction was Assad didn't do it, the Syrian government didn't do it.”

“Why were they that defensive that quick?” Haley continued. “The first priority for them was to cover for Assad. So what we knew from intelligence, that the Syrian regime had done this again, as they had done so many times before. We had evidence they had done it. It's obviously classified, so I’m not the one that would release the information, but it was enough that the president knew.”