US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called productive talks in Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin, noting that he “very well” knows the problems of bilateral relations, State Department’s press service reported.

“On our behalf, we have said it multiple times that we also would like to rebuild fully fledged relations, and I hope that right now a conducive environment is being built for that, because, though, however exotic the work of Special Counsel Mueller was, I have to say that on the whole he had a very objective investigation and he confirmed that there are no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration, which we’ve said was absolutely fake,” he said. “We did have a productive set of conversations this afternoon between us. There’s places we disagree; there’s places I think there are truly overlapping interests that we can build on, and most importantly, President Trump very much wants to do that. Always, just as you will, we’ll protect our nation’s interests, but there are places that our two countries can find where we can be cooperative, we can be productive, we can be cumulative, we can work together to make each of our two peoples more successful and, frankly, the world more successful too.”

Putin’s talks with Pompeo, who first arrived in Russia as state secretary, lasted about an hour and a half. The sides discussed international issues, including the conflict in Syria and the Iranian issue, as well as the possibility of Putin meeting with US President Donald Trump within G20 summit in Japan.

Assistant to the Russian leader Yury Ushakov noted that there was no breakthrough in relations between Russia and the US after the meeting, but he called the attitude of the American side businesslike.