MOSCOW. Sept 23 (Interfax) - Russian-U.S. relations could change following the presidential elections in the U.S., said Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin.

"I think it is just pointless to talk about relations with America now, before the election campaign," Lukin, who served as a Russian ambassador to the U.S. in the 1990s, told journalists in response to a question from Interfax on Tuesday.

Lukin admitted that Russian-U.S. relations are bad now and attributed this rift to two factors. "The Americans objectively got a slap in the face in the Caucasus, regardless of whether they had stimulated and encouraged the Georgian president to launch that attack on our peacekeepers and on South Ossetia on the whole or not. Everybody knows that they (the U.S.) helped them (Georgia) and predisposed them in a certain way and got a slap in the face, which is especially unpleasant during an election campaign," Lukin said.

"They are really riled now," he said.

The second factor is the presidential election campaign, he said.

"Whatever is said now, the policy building will be started again. This is when it will make sense to talk about prospects of our relations in the coming four years, and they certainly can change," he said.