Moscow opposed to attempts of presenting Lavrov-Kerry contacts as Russia’s

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow Tuesday and began talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with an aim to restore stability in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

The last round of worldwide Vienna talks on November 14 ended in a decision to uphold the 2012 Geneva communique on a peaceful political solution to the Syrian conflict and bring together the Syrian government and opposition forces for peace talks by January 1, 2016.

For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement complaining that Washington was not ready to fully cooperate in the struggle against Islamic State militants and needed to rethink its policy of “dividing terrorists into good and bad ones”.

Meanwhile, on Ukraine – where the USA and Russian Federation are split over the implementation of a February agreement that sought to end hostilities between the Kiev government and Moscow-backed separatists in the east – Lavrov said that American involvement might even be a “positive factor”.

After the talks, Lavrov and Kerry will have a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin says the Syrian people, and not external powers, should decide Assad’s political fate.

Russian Federation has long insisted that curbing the spread of ISIS is far more important than a political transition in Syria, which is an issue the two countries remain divided on.

Kerry praised Moscow for having been “a significant contributor to the progress that we have been able to make” on Syria and said the USA and Russian Federation both believe the Islamic State group must be eliminated.

Russian Federation says its airstrikes since late September have targeted the Islamic State, but Western governments claim mostly moderate rebels are being hit and that Moscow is primarily concerned with shoring up Assad.

The big topic of conversation will be the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Syrian opposition groups, however, demand that Assad leave at the start of the process.

The situation in Ukraine is different. Russia, on the other hand, is bombing in support of his regime.

US Secretary of State John Kerry stops in front of a donut shop while walking on Arbat Street to go souvenir shopping in Moscow Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015. President Barack Obama has seen Putin briefly twice since then at summits in Turkey and France.

US officials expect the talks with Putin would be dominated by the list of opposition groups that would join the talks.