What is on the agenda when the Russian Foreign minister meets with Donald Trump? The Telegraph's Moscow reporter Roland Oliphant explains:

Syria; Ukraine; North Korea.

All those prickly global dilemmas will be on the agenda when Donald Trump hosts Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, at the White House today.

But Mr Lavrov will be looking to set up the moment we’ve all been waiting for – a face to face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

It has been a long time coming.

Expectations of a “reset” between the US and the Trump administration and Mr Putin’s Kremlin were dashed almost as soon as the new US administration entered the White House in January.

To the disappointment of many in Russia, and the relief of US allies, Mr Trump has not eased sanctions related to the Ukraine crisis, scaled back commitment to Nato, or realigned the US behind Russia in Syria.

Things got worse when Mr Trump ordered a missile strike against a Syrian government airbase last month – a move Russia called an act of aggression and a breach of international law.

And although the two leaders have spoken on the phone, they have failed to produce progress on any of the issues that poisoned relations between the Kremlin and Barack Obama.

What went wrong?

In large part, those expectations were unrealistic in the first place. Sober thinkers in Washington and Moscow never believed fundamental strategic disagreements could be smoothed over with a change of US administration.

And on going scrutiny of possible ties between Moscow and Mr Trump’s election campaign have also made even modest moves towards a thaw politically difficult.

Mr Trump’s decision to fire FBI director James Comey on the eve of the visit will not make that any easier.

A meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin has been tentatively scheduled for the G20 summit in Hamburg next month. Mr Lavrov has been careful to say a relationship between the two has already been established.

Speaking on Russian television on Wednesday, he said the telephone calls between the two men "were very intense, very specific, devoid of anything artificial.”