Moscow hopes the first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump later this week will establish an effective working dialogue between the two men, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, July 5, according to Reuters.

The meeting, due to be held on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg on Friday, will be closely watched at a time when ties between the two countries remain strained by U.S. allegations of Russian election hacking, Syria, Ukraine and a U.S. row over Trump associates' links to Moscow.

"This is the first meeting, the first time the two presidents will get acquainted - this is the main thing about it," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.

"The expectation is that a working dialogue will be established, which is vitally important for the entire world when it comes to increasing the efficiency of resolving a critical mass of conflicts."

The meeting would explore whether there was a chance and a readiness for the two countries to fight international terrorism together in Syria, Peskov said, saying Putin would explain Moscow's stance on the conflicts in both Syria and Ukraine.

But Peskov said the meeting's brief format meant the Russian leader might not have enough time to give a full analysis of what Moscow regarded as the causes of the Ukraine crisis.