This is how diplomacy works. We don't negotiate or speak directly to the North Korean regime. We don't engage with Taiwan as to not upset China. We don't acknowledge a Palestinian state or do things like move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They all seem like simple, normal things: Speaking directly to someone you want something from, calling the leader of a country on the phone, moving the location of an embassy. Diplomatically these simple things matter greatly.
We haven't given the Russian government the time of day or respect they think they deserve since they invaded Crimea. The US government under Obama did not want to normalize that behavior by continuing on business as usual. We sanctioned them and completely ended our attempt at a reset with them. Our diplomatic gestures completely changed. We stopped hosting the foreign minister at the White House.
Trump has already opened the door to a reset on this through his speeches and Tweets. He gave them, as mentioned above, something they had been begging for since 2013, a private visit to the Oval Office. If Russian photogs hadn't released the pictures we wouldn't have even known Sergey Kisylak was in the room.
You are being a little pedantic about no immediate changes to Russia's situation If there is some quid pro quo going on between Trump's team and Russia do you think they'd just be moving forward with it while three active investigations (that we know of) are going on. Do you think think they'd put it right on the nose like that?
Let's not forget this tweet from then President Elect Trump on 12/30/2016:
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!
As a refresher, Trump is praising Putin's decision not to respond to the United States' tightening sanctions and booting 35 Russian nationals out of the country following the hack of the Democratic National Committee. Soon after this we found out about Michael Flynn's unauthorized calls to Kisylak speaking about how things would be different when Trump assumed office, This all ended in Flynn's firing and kicked the public investigations into high gear. What do you think would have happened had they not been caught red handed talking about easing these sanctions? Even on top of that we've had Senator John McCain say that he will codify Russian sanctions into law and have a vote on them if Trump tries to executive order magic wand them away.
I expect if Trump is able to stay on for his entire and hopefully only term as POTUS four year from now Vladimir Putin and his government will be much happier about their diplomatic relations with the US. The changes will come through gradual easing of diplomatic tensions, some of the sanctions, and an eventual normalization of Crimea being a part of Russia.