Obama Red-Carpet Official Visit to Russia July 6-8

U.S. President Barack Obama is to pay an official visit to Russia July 6-8. Preparations in Moscow are in full swing to give President Obama the full red-carpet treatment.

  I hope that my American colleague and I will hold substantial and full-fledged talks that will produce real results. I hope that these talks will give us the chance to examine all aspects of our relations. Russia and America need new, common, mutually beneficial projects in business, science and culture. We need to move forward on the basis of a resolutely practical agenda. I hope that this sincere desire to open a new chapter in Russian-American cooperation will be brought into fruition to the benefit of our countries and the entire world.

Russia and the U.S. will sign deals expanding bilateral military ties and on transit of military supplies via Russia to U.S. troops in Afghanistan during the U.S. president's visit to Moscow, a Kremlin aide said.

The first agreement during Barack Obama's visit will reflect "the political decision on the resumption of full-scale military contacts between Russia and the United States," which had been frozen following a brief war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia last year, Sergei Prikhodko said on Friday.

Medvedev said he hopes "by joint efforts, while acting in the spirit of mutual respect and trust, the required dynamics will be given to the Russian-American partnership, and it will be taken to a qualitatively new level meeting the interests of our states and the entire global community."

Prikhodko said Moscow hoped a new treaty regulating the number of long-range nuclear weapons would be signed early next year, but that its contents must not be sacrificed for the sake of a date. The current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed before the Soviet Union's breakup in 1991, and expires in December this year.