John Tefft presented his credentials as the new U.S. Ambassador to Moscow on Monday during a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
A statement published on the Foreign Ministry's website said Ryabkov and Tefft had discussed some of the "pending questions on the Russian-U.S. bilateral agenda" during their meeting. According to the U.S. Embassy's Twitter account, Tefft arrived in Moscow on Friday.
Tefft, who has arrived to Moscow when Russian-U.S. relations are at their lowest since the end of the Cold War, was sworn in last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
His arrival ends a period of interregnum at the U.S. Embassy after the previous head of the mission, Michael McFaul, resigned in February.
Unlike McFaul, an academic by trade, Tefft is a career diplomat. He has previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Georgia and Lithuania, and he was also deputy chief of the mission to Moscow in 1996-1999.
