By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plan to meet here in Washington with their Russian counterparts later this week for a day of talks that could determine the fate of a September summit between President Obama and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Obama administration officials declined to comment on the meeting with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister and Sergei K. Shoigu, the defense minister. But Russian officials said preparations for this week’s discussions, which they say will take place Friday, are now complete.
“We expect a very intensive discussion, all the more so because there are quite a few sharp, controversial and difficult questions,” Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, said Tuesday.
At the top of that list of difficult questions is certain to be the status of next month’s planned meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin, which has been in doubt for weeks because of Russia’s refusal to return Edward J. Snowden to the United States to face charges of leaking national security secrets and other issues between the two countries.
American officials have signaled that Russia’s decision to grant Mr. Snowden temporary asylum undermined the relationship between the two countries and could affect whether Mr. Obama agrees to travel to Moscow next month. He is scheduled to be in St. Petersburg for a meeting of the G-20 scheduled for Sept. 5 and 6, and had planned to travel from there to meet Mr. Putin.
On Monday, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said a decision was forthcoming.
“I think it’s fair to say that you can expect that we’ll have a decision to announce in coming days about that specific issue,” Mr. Carney told reporters. “We obviously disagree with the Russians very strongly about the decision they’ve made on Mr. Snowden.”
But Mr. Carney said the administration also disagreed with Russia on “a number of other issues, including Syria.” And he said that the question of whether the two presidents meet would be determined by whether such a gathering could help make progress on a broader set of concerns.
“We are evaluating that against not just our disagreement over Mr. Snowden, but some of the other issues where we have failed to see, thus far, eye to eye,” Mr. Carney said. “And once we have fully assessed the utility of a summit, we’ll make an announcement.”
Russian officials said they expected the presidential summit to go on as planned. And they waved aside the assertion by the United States that the decision on Mr. Snowden should affect whether Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin come together for a face-to-face meeting to confront their disagreements.
Russia’s decision to grant Mr. Snowden asylum, Mr. Ryabakov said Tuesday, had been blown out of proportion and threatened to undermine cooperation on important international issues, including the conflict in Syria, Iran’s nuclear program and the winding down of the American-led military operations in Afghanistan.
“The usefulness of contacts at the highest level is obvious to us,” he said. He added that criticism of Russia’s handling of Mr. Snowden’s appeal were “simply absurd.”
That issue seems sure to be discussed by the four officials at when they meet in Washington. Officials in the United States said the meeting had long been planned, but that the issue of Mr. Snowden and the implications for the summit were sure to come up.
But American officials stressed that the standoff about the summit is the result of more than just Mr. Snowden. The relationship between Russia and the United States has bogged down over questions about nuclear weapons, a dispute over what to do in Syria, questions about Iran and other issues.
Speaking in Rome, Mr. Lavrov said Tuesday that imposing new sanctions on Iran — like those proposed in a bill passed last week by the House of Representatives — would not be viewed as productive by Russians. Mr. Lavrov also discussed the need to move ahead with Syrian peace talks that had been agreed to by Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry in Moscow last May.
“The more we delay calling it, the more victims there will be among civilians,” Mr. Lavrov said at a news conference in Rome, according to Interfax. He blamed the Syrian rebels for resisting opening talks with President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Mr. Snowden, meantime, remains in seclusion, having made no public appearances or statements since he left Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow last Thursday. On Tuesday, his lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, said in an interview that Mr. Snowden had received an official residence permit required for any Russian or foreigner to live in the country, though he again declined to discuss his exact whereabouts.
He also said that he had extended an official invitation to help Mr. Snowden’s father and friends obtain visas to visit him in Russia.
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