Russian President Vladimir Putin said he expects his summit this week with US President Joe Biden to help establish dialogue between the two countries and restore personal contacts between them.
Biden will meet Putin on June 16 in Geneva, at a summit that comes amid strained bilateral relations on a wide range of issues.
The summit will be "in order to restore our personal contacts and relations, to establish direct dialogue, to find truly effective mechanisms in those areas that represent common interests," the Russian Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying, in an excerpt from an interview with state television.
According to the same source, the Russian President said that his country would be ready to extradite the perpetrators of cyber attacks to the United States if Washington did the same to Moscow, and if the two countries reached an agreement leading to that.
Extradition
The White House had said that the US President would raise the issue of cyber-attacks using malicious software to demand ransom from Russia during the upcoming summit.
"If we agree to extradite the criminals, Russia will, of course, do it... but only if the other party, the United States in this case, agrees to the same and hand over the criminals in question to the Russian Federation," the agency quoted Putin as saying.
Putin had said that relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest level in recent years, in an interview with the American network NBC.
In the interview, Putin praised former US President Donald Trump, describing him as an "exceptional and talented person", and said Biden - as a professional politician - was "fundamentally different" from Trump.