Vladimir Putin is likely to count the format and tone of his long meeting with Donald Trump as a win – even if nothing much of substance was discussed.

Russia’s election hacking was raised during the meeting, but it does not appear to have taken top billing. US secretary of state Rex Tillerson said Trump was “rightly focused on how we move forward”, while Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov even claimed Trump had told Putin he accepted the Russian leader’s denials of involvement.

Setting up a working group on non-interference in future elections – as Tillerson said had been agreed – is hardly likely to reassure those in Washington worried about Russia’s actions.

A trustworthy account of exactly how the meeting went down is unlikely to surface, but another win for Putin was the makeup of the room. In addition to the two presidents, the only people present were the respective foreign ministers and two interpreters. This means there is no chance of leaks, as happened when Lavrov visited the White House in May and it later emerged that Trump had shared sensitive intelligence with the Russians.

The personalised format of the meeting excluded those in Trump’s team who are more sceptical about Russia, such as national security adviser HR McMaster and Trump’s senior Russia adviser Fiona Hill.

Since Trump’s election, the detente in relations that Moscow was banking on has not occurred and the toxicity with which anything to do with Russia now creates in Washington has made it clear that a major change in the tone of relations between the two countries is unlikely – making a personal rapport between Trump and Putin even more important for Moscow.

Russian television emphasised the length of the meeting, which ran more than four times its scheduled half-hour length, as a sign of Russia’s importance. The news of a US-Russia agreement on a ceasefire in south-western Syria, announced as the meeting was taking place, is an example of the kind of top-table diplomacy Putin would like to do with Trump.

That deal may prove less than durable and go the way of many previous failed ceasefire agreements on Syria, but at a time when the world’s media is fixated on Russian election meddling, it is a win for Putin that the main headline from the meeting is that a deal of any sort was struck.

The few remarks from Trump before the talks gave little hint as to the details of the planned discussion, but they were remarkable for what they left out.

When the two men met earlier in the day, , Trump could have at least nodded to “disagreements” or “problems” in the bilateral relationship.

But, in what must have been music to Putin’s ears, he simply said it was “an honour” to meet the Russian president.

Putin looked impassive, but he would have been smiling inside. As journalists were hurried out of the room, Putin appeared to gesture to Trump and ask if these journalists were the ones who had insulted Trump, laughing at his own joke.

Presumably Putin had been briefed that a disdain for supposed “fake news” would be a promising area of potential common ground with the US president.