Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, held talks with the United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump in Washington on May 10, 2017.

Prior to the meeting with U.S. officials, Foreign Minister Lavrov said that he and his counterpart would discuss a broad range of topics. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, had earlier indicated that the discussion would center on bilateral relations and counterterrorism.

“I want to welcome Foreign Minister Lavrov to the State Department and express my appreciation for his making the trip to Washington so that we could continue our dialogue and our exchange of views that began in Moscow,” Secretary of State Tillerson said in opening the bilateral meeting.

The efforts of the United States and Russia to make the relationship between the two countries better and to locate areas of cooperation will likely be the center theme of a meeting between the Russian leader and the U.S. President in July at the G-20 summit. At the meeting in May, the highest-ranking diplomats from Russia and the U.S. talked for about an hour at the State Department prior to coming to the White House.

A presser from the State Department regarding the discussion session of Secretary Tillerson and Foreign Minister Lavrov pointed out that the top diplomats addressed the war in Syria, the fight against ISIS, as well as supplying humanitarian assistance to the conflict zone and deescalating the violence in the region.

The situation in Ukraine was also among the subjects discussed. Secretary Tillerson stated that the sanctions the U.S. imposed on Russia would continue in force pending the fulfilment of the Minsk accords.

The State Department stated that “the United States and Russia agreed to continue discussions to resolve other issues of bilateral concern, including strategic stability.”

When talking to journalists, Foreign Minister Lavrov confirmed that he and Secretary Tillerson reached consensus to pursue discussions on straightening out the relations of the two countries. The two-way conversation began earlier with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and the U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon, who met on May 8, 2017.

“Far from all issues have been resolved. I would even say that the movement forward is very modest, but we agreed that we will continue to use this channel,” Foreign Minister Lavrov stated.

U.S.-Russia relations, badly hit by disagreements over Ukraine and Syria, worsened considerably in the concluding months of President Obama’s administration. The two countries’ relationship has suffered in the last few years due to the reinforcement of NATO forces in proximity to Russia’s borders, the military conflict in Syria, and the government overthrow in Ukraine. On top of that, the U.S. lawmakers claimed that Russia influenced the results of the presidential election in America to the detriment of former first lady Hillary Clinton.

The Russian side has consistently rejected the claims that it interfered in the U.S. election.  Foreign Minister Lavrov went as far along as to say that the charges leveled at Russia were an embarrassment to the United States.

“It’s humiliating for the American people to believe the Russian Federation is controlling the domestic situation in the United States,” he stated. The Russian diplomat said that the matter of Russia’s alleged involvement was not brought up in talks with Secretary Tillerson or with President Trump.

At the final press conference, Foreign Minister Lavrov said that President Trump and the Russian leader would like to see practical outcomes from the discussions in Washington.

According to the diplomat’s remarks, President Trump stated to Foreign Minister Lavrov that Russia and the U.S. can work together in bringing peace to the Middle East.

In the course of the Oval Office meeting, the U.S. President emphasized the significance of working together with the Russian side to end the Syrian conflict. President Trump said to reporters that the meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister went well.

“We’re talking about Syria and I think that we’re going to do very well with respect to Syria and things are happening that are really, really, really positive,” President Trump told reporters, adding further that the U.S. and Russia both would like to stop “the killing – the horrible, horrible killing in Syria as soon as possible.”

In his remarks, President Trump emphasized his determination to improve the relationship with Russia, harking back to the stance he took on the campaign trail.

Foreign Minister Lavrov noted that the dialogue with President Trump was “free from the ideology” that always characterized negotiations with representatives of the Obama administration.

The implementation of the steps needed to rebuild the trust in the two countries’ relationship in the interests of cooperation is expected to be high on the agenda at the first meeting between President Trump and President Putin during the G-20 summit in July 2017.