lavrov trump oval office white house
© Twitter / @realDonaldTrump'OMG, two Russians in the White House!' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Donald Trump
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he did not discuss 'election meddling' with his US hosts, but that Moscow is willing to publish communications with the Obama administration showing that nothing happened in 2016.

After meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department, Lavrov also sat down with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. The White House readout of their meeting said that Trump had "warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections."

"We did not discuss the election," Lavrov told reporters later on Tuesday, adding that the talks focused on improving US-Russia relations going forward. When someone tried to frame that as an accusation that the White House had lied, the foreign minister clarified. "I did not read the White House readout," Lavrov said.

Insofar as the subject came up, the top Russian diplomat mentioned that Moscow was perfectly willing to publish the correspondence conducted with the Obama administration between October 2016 and January 2017, using the since-shuttered cybersecurity cooperation channel.

Lavrov noted that he did not understand why the current administration is refusing to release the documents, which he said would show that Russia had offered to help and clarify any allegations of "meddling" in the 2016 vote, only to have the Obama administration "categorically refuse."