US President Barack Obama’s national security advisor was set Monday to hold talks with top Russian officials in Moscow, as the foes were stuck in a political row over blacklists

US President Barack Obama's national security advisor was set Monday to hold talks with top Russian officials in Moscow, as the foes were stuck in a political row over blacklists.
  
White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon is the highest-ranking American to visit Russia since Obama's inauguration for a second term in January, but his trip coincides with one of the trickiest moments in bilateral relations in recent years, AFP said.

Donilon on his two-day visit is expected to meet his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. However in a sign of the chill in Russia-US ties, it is not clear whether he will meet President Vladimir Putin.
  
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian strongman might at some point "join in" the discussion between Patrushev and Donilon "if his working schedule allows".
     
The United States late Friday published a list of 18 Russians it was blacklisting over “human rights abuses”. Russia a day later responded with a similar list of its own in a tit-for-tat move.
  
"The first person to feel the effects of Washington's blacklists is going to be T. Donilon. He is not coming to us at the best of times," the head of the Russian lower house of parliament's foreign affairs committee Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter.
  
The US list blacklists 16 Russians allegedly linked to the death of jailed lawyer Sergei Magntisky in 2009 as well as two Chechens who stand accused of ‘murder’. They are barred from travelling to the US or holding assets there.
  
Russia slammed the move as unfriendly and a day later hit back with its own blacklist of 18 Americans including several well-known figures linked to detention practices at the Guantanamo prison.