Lavrov on Comey: Was he fired? You're kidding

The meeting with Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday was the highest-level public contact between Trump and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin since Trump took office on January 20.

He also questioned why the firing was done in a seemingly "helter-skelter" fashion. "There is not a single fact (or) compelling evidence regarding Russia's intervention", he said.

According to Pence, Comey had lost the confidence of the American people.

Lavrov arrived in Washington on Tuesday; he met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the White House early Wednesday, ahead of a visit to the Oval Office to speak with Trump.

Yet Trump's stunning decision on the eve of the meeting to fire the FBI director overseeing a Russia-related investigation injected further intrigue into Lavrov's first visit to Washington since 2013. "You are kidding. You are kidding".

It also will be a sign that the two countries have improved ties.

With ongoing fighting paralyzing eastern Ukraine, the two foreign ministers discussed the need to fully implement the Minsk ceasefire agreement.

In a press conference at his embassy afterward, attended only by Russian media, Lavrov casually taunted the US over the federal investigation into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 election, which he derided as unproved.

James Comey was sacked as FBI Director, after Trump "lost confidence in him".

CNN called the subpoenas “the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBIs broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russian Federation.”.

He's brushing off the questions as "noise" about Russians' contacts with people in Trump's campaign.

He told reporters in the Oval Office that Comey was "not doing a good job".

"A Comical Firing" was the headline on a the Comey story on Russia's pro-Kremlin NTV news channel.

In an interview last week, Trump once again refused to blame Russian Federation for attempting to influence the 2016 election through hacking and other means, despite an overwhelming consensus by USA law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Initially, the Lavrov-Tillerson talks were planned on the sidelines of the Arctic Council meeting, but later the meeting was relocated to the USA capital.

Lavrov and Tillerson have said relations between Moscow and Russian Federation are worse than they have been in decades.

The questions arose in part because TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, published photos from the meeting, even though it was closed to the press. Before that, he was Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in NY from 1994 to 2004.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says Tillerson and Lavrov agreed that the United Nations process is "central to worldwide efforts to bring about an enduring resolution".

The pair's face-to-face meeting comes ahead of an Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska.

But Lavrov said he detected a US willingness to participate, especially with a zone being formed in Syria's south, near the border with Israel and Jordan.

Still, the overlap between the FBI Russia investigation and Mr Trump's diplomatic efforts could not be brushed aside.

In particular, there is lingering concern that Tillerson won't address the Russian hack during the 2016 election or push back against Russian interference in Ukraine or its annexation of Crimea. That's exactly what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry did for years as they tried and failed to cajole the Russian government to stop helping Assad murder civilians. Unfortunately, instead of "reset" the Russian word on the button read "overcharged".

"We believe the United States is really interested in that", Mr Lavrov said, acknowledging that details of the plan still needed to be worked out.

Sestanovich says the Russians are convinced that "cold-war thinking still rules in the US" and that "if US-Russia relations are bad, it's because the US has hostile intentions towards Russia".