“I don’t think the Biden administration wants to embark on a costly arms race when it has so many other priorities,” said Angela E. Stent, the director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. “Once that is done, I would anticipate they will engage in new arms negotiations. That whole cluster has been ignored for years. That could lead to more stable communication with the Russian government.”

Russia was also a party to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration, which Mr. Trump withdrew from in 2018 and Mr. Biden says he wants to rejoin.

But doing so is likely to require more negotiations with Tehran — and with Moscow, which accepted tons of low-enriched uranium from Iran under the last agreement and may be asked to do the same again.

While the Obama administration engaged with Russia on a range of other issues, such as short-lived cease-fires in Syria and a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, others have emerged or gained new urgency over the past four years, including the climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, putting new pressure on Moscow to cooperate.

“I think over time, Russia is going to have to change the way they do things not because of our pressure but the sheer weight of the shifts in climate change,” Ms. Hill said, noting that thaws in the polar ice cap have led to competition for Arctic shipping lanes near Alaska that never existed before. “There has got to be fresh thinking on these issues.”

To that end, Mr. Biden will have a special envoy for climate: John Kerry, a former secretary of state who spent countless hours working with Kremlin officials on Iran, Syria, Ukraine and other matters. Ms. Hill said Russia might also be needed for a global vaccination program to squelch the coronavirus.

While Mr. Biden has been harshly critical of Mr. Putin’s political repression, a subject Mr. Trump largely ignored, a purely punitive approach may not achieve much.