MOSCOW, September 08./ITAR-TASS/. John Tefft, a new US ambassador to Russia, paid a visit on Monday to the Russian Foreign Ministry and presented deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov with copy of his credentials, the ministry reported.

“Key issues on the agenda of bilateral relations between Russia and the United States were discussed,” the Russian Foreign Ministry reported but did not specify the topics, which were discussed during Tefft’s visit to the ministry.

An ITAR-TASS correspondent reported earlier that Tefft spent approximately an hour in the Russian Foreign Ministry and after the visit he proceeded straight to the car waiting for him without pausing to talk to journalists.

Tefft, a career diplomat and former US ambassador to Ukraine, Georgia and Lithuania, arrived in Moscow last Friday.

"I am very happy to return to Russia,” he said upon his arrival. “I am looking forward to work and interaction with Russians representing all social strata."

Tefft was nominated by President Barack Obama in July to fill the post that has been vacant since February when Tefft's predecessor, Michael McFaul, resigned.

The US diplomat served as deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Moscow between 1996 and 1999 (when Thomas Pickering was the US ambassador to Russia) and was charge d’affairs at the embassy between November 1996 and September 1997. Before his recent appointment, Tefft was the executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum at the RAND Corporation.