When Barack Obama meets Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruling duumvirate, in Moscow next week, both sides say they want to “press the reset button” in US-Russian relations. It will not be easy. Bilateral ties between the erstwhile rivals of the cold war reached their nadir last year with the Russian invasion of Georgia and the seemingly inexorable expansion of the Nato alliance. Those tensions persist.

Moscow is bitterly opposed to the installation of US anti-missile defence batteries and radar detection systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The US sees Russia as unhelpful in seeking to curb the nuclear ambitions of Iran, and positively unfriendly in signing arms deals with other anti-American allies. Moscow’s political manipulation of oil and gas supplies is another cause for US suspicion.