The conflict around Georgia became an additional factor of deterioration of Russian-American relations. But this negative trend as such, notwithstanding the «partnership rhetoric» that sounded at summit meetings, has been developing in the course of the whole political cycle of the relations of Putin and Bush. The article presented here contains analysis of the reasons of such state of things – the author adduces several groups of factors that have for a long period of time exerted negative influence on the bilateral relations. The main reason of the established unfavorable situation, in the author’s opinion, consists in the fact that since the early 90s the two sides have never managed to fill the declarative partnership with real contents. On D.Medvedev’s and B.Obama’s ability and preparedness to rectify this systemic defect of Moscow’s and Washington’s interaction will depend durability of mutual interaction.