Even before Barack Obama boards Air Force One tonight to attend the first fully fledged summit between the United States and Russia since 2002, the diplomatic ether between Moscow and Washington was fairly crackling with the static of both anticipation and latent suspicion.

Russia is the first and the most critical of three stops on Obama's latest transatlantic foray, which will also include the G8 Summit in earthquake-damaged L'Aquila in central Italy and conclude with an inevitably emotional visit by America's first black leader to Africa, specifically to Ghana.

While the tourist shelves of Moscow are clogged with Obama dolls, the president faces challenges in his two days of meetings there, includ­ing talks tomorrow with president Dmitry Medvedev and on Tuesday with his predecessor and now the prime minister, Vladimir Putin. He will also meet with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and deliver a major policy speech at the Higher School of Economics.

With Medvedev, progress will be measured in part by an agreement to advance talks on replacing Start 1, the strategic arms treaty that expires in December. On Friday, Kremlin officials previewed a deal to allow the US to transport military hardware through Russia to the war in Afghanistan.

But before leaving Washington, Obama indicated that his greater goal is to show that the old clichés of Cold War antagonism between Russia and the US can at last be left behind. "This will be a very important meeting which will basically answer the question of whether the US and Russia can work together," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, a think tank.

Wisely or not, Obama indulged in a not-so-subtle dig at Putin, whose influence in Russia may still be larger than his title.

"I think that it's important that even as we move forward with Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated," he said last week. "Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."

Teasing Putin, if only a bit, carries risks for Obama. "The most important part about his trip to Moscow is going to be his discussions with Vladimir Putin, in my view," Andrew Kuchins of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said. "Putin is by far and away the most important and powerful figure in Russia. It is pretty simple logic."

Putin himself attempted gently to swat away Obama's remarks. "We don't know how to stand so awkwardly with our legs apart," he said on Russian television. "We stand solidly on our own two feet and always look into the future." His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was harsher. "Such a point of view has nothing to do with a true understanding of Putin," he said. "They are not acquainted."

The White House remains hopeful the 'Obama effect' can be put to work in Russia. He signalled his interest in engaging in new arms talks in Prague in April and has indicated a willingness at least to reconsider US plans to embark on a new anti-missiles shield in Europe. Washington has also quietly put further of expansion of Nato – a serious irritant to US-Russia relations – on the back-burner.

But there are still frictions, including the hangover from Russia's military operations last year in Georgia. Moreover, recent surveys suggest that ordinary Russians are almost as wary of the US under Obama as they were of George Bush's America. A poll last month by Russia's Levada Centre found that only 28% of Russians thought relations with the US had improved under Obama.

Aides to the president hope younger Russians especially will be wooed when they hear Obama's speech, billed as one of a series of four addresses to a global audience that began in Prague and includes his recent appeal to the Muslim world in Egypt.

The fourth of the series will come in Ghana. The mere prospect of Obama's touching down in Africa has the region fizzing, although some African countries, including Nigeria and Kenya, the birthplace of Obama's father, are wondering why he chose Ghana over them.

Obama partly answered the question in an interview with the AllArica website. It's about the exercise of democracy.

"Countries that are governed well, that are stable, where leadership recognises that they are accountable to the people and that institutions are stronger than any one person, have a track record of producing results for the people. And we want to highlight that," he said.