Important Takeaways:

• Diplomats from the United States and Russia met and spoke at the U.S. consul general’s residence in Istanbul, Turkey for over six hours on Thursday, the latest meeting between the countries in a bid to normalize diplomatic relations before moving on to the larger matter of finding a solution to the Ukraine War. The discussions were said to have been focused on allowing the two countries to return to being able to properly operate embassies in each other’s’ nations.
• An agreement was reached to hold further meetings although when and where was not stated.
• Thursday’s talk followed another in-person meeting between Russian and American delegations in Saudi Arabia last week, the first such meeting between the nations in years, and a phone call between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin before that. An ambition of these talks is to get diplomatic relations between the states to a point where the two leaders are able to meet in-person to negotiate an end to the Ukraine War, but no meaningful progress on that has been made public.
• One facet of talks so far has been grumbling from Europe and Ukraine in particular about their not having been invited to these talks. While U.S. diplomats have been mollifying, pointing out these first meetings are specifically about American-Russian relations and Europe and Ukraine will have a seat at the table when relevant in the future, Russia’s Putin was more direct, warning European leaders not to attempt to undermine the process.

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