Russian leader Vladimir Putin said he's committed to improving ties with the U.S. now that special counsel Robert Mueller's probe showed a "demonstrated absence of any kind of traces, of any kind of collusion" between Moscow and President Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

"My impression is that the president is set to restore Russian-American relations, contacts, to jointly resolve issues that are of mutual interest to us," Putin told Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in front of reporters before a private meeting Tuesday. "For our part, we have repeatedly said that we would also like to restore full-format relations."

Meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier pledged to seek better relations and ease tensions, even as they diverged sharply on issues from Iran and Venezuela to U.S. findings of Kremlin meddling in U.S. elections.