After a break of nearly two years, the leaders of two of the world's most powerful countries finally met on July 7. With much anticipation, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump held their first face-to-face session, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. The hype surrounding the meeting was similar to that generated by the Reagan-Gorbachev summits of the 1980s, when U.S.-Russian relations were at a similarly low level. The Russians were cautious going into this meeting and let the White House define the type of encounter, knowing full well the pressure on Trump from Washington for his first meeting with Putin. Once a formal bilateral meeting was scheduled, the Kremlin set a fairly low bar on expectations.