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During his presidency, standing beside Mr Putin in Helsinki, Mr Trump refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 US election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking a storm of criticism from across the west.
Relations between the USA and Russia have deteriorated in recent years, notably with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, its 2015 intervention in Syria and US charges – which are denied by the Kremlin – of meddling in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.
The senior US official said the United States was looking at “areas where working together can advance our national interests and make the world safer”.
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, set the bar for Wednesday’s talks low.
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