The trip marks the most significant US interaction with Putin since July WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in Russia in the highest-level formal talks between the powers in 10 months, the State Department said on Friday. The top US diplomat will meet Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to “discuss the full range of bilateral and multilateral challenges,” the State Department said. The US and Russia are at loggerheads over a number of global issues including Venezuela, where Pompeo has led US calls to demand that Moscow stop backing President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist whom Washington is trying to oust. The trip marks the most significant US interaction with Putin since July, when President Donald Trump met the Russian leader in Finland in an encounter that was widely criticized inside the US. Russia earlier announced Pompeo’s visit but it had been unclear whether he would meet Putin. He will also hold talks in Sochi with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. This is teir second meeting in as many weeks after they met on the sidelines of an Arctic conference in Helsinki. Pompeo will also visit Moscow, where he will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier dedicated to Soviet troops killed in World War II — an era when Moscow and Washington were allied.