US Breaks Russia's International Isolation as Riyadh Summit Begins

On Tuesday, the United States broke the international isolation imposed on Russia by the West three years ago due to the invasion of Ukraine. The foreign ministers of both countries, Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov, have already met in Saudi Arabia to explore the possibility of advancing a resolution to the war and consider a future summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, which the former wishes to occur "very soon."

The last formal meeting between the two countries was held in Geneva in January 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, engaged in a tense conversation to ease the pre-war climate in Ukraine. No agreements were reached, but both committed to continuing negotiations to ensure peace and security in Europe. The invasion began a month later. In March 2023, the two diplomats met again in India on the sidelines of a G20 summit. Although there was some hope for an emerging peace miracle, it was a brief dialogue without concessions. Blinken requested a face-to-face with Lavrov. Following the frustration of the event, Joe Biden's administration cut ties with the Kremlin.

The meeting in Riyadh now breaks all the rules of the previous American administration, in which the Democratic leader froze all relations with Moscow and led the international response against the invaders, including the massive shipment of weapons to Kyiv to counter Russian troops. Biden led a coalition of Western, primarily European, governments, which now finds itself orphaned. Adrift, as demonstrated by Monday's Paris summit, where the main powers of the Old Continent gathered to show unity and support for Kyiv but ended without a common statement and with palpable disagreements over the possibility of sending peacekeeping troops to the former republic.

This Tuesday's meeting in the Arab city represents a complete disruption of the approaches applied over the past three years to the worst armed conflict known in Europe since the Balkan wars, which spanned from 1991 to 2001 and caused around 200,000 deaths, and beyond, the Second World War. The most drastic change in approach comes from the military. The US deviates for the first time from the strategy of force and continuous arms supply to a diplomatic approach.

Although it is still very early, as this first meeting is merely exploratory of each other's intentions, some experts claim that if it prospers, issues such as what to do with diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions on Russia will be exposed. Europe is a staunch defender of resistance against Moscow. Its role at this moment is irrelevant, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has hinted that it will have a place in the talks if they prove serious, and then it will have to position itself before the United States, Russia, and Ukraine on sensitive issues such as the freezing of Russian funds or the continuation of sanctions on companies, activities, and hierarchs of that country, whose entry has been vetoed by the European Union countries.

For now, the Kremlin made a gesture towards its interlocutor on Monday by releasing an American detained for drug trafficking just over a week ago at Moscow airport. Recently, the Russian government released a US professor arrested in 2021 for marijuana trafficking, in exchange for Alexander Vinnik, imprisoned in a US jail for money laundering. Unlike this case, Monday's release occurred without any exchange, unconditionally, in a maneuver that the Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, frames as an incipient resumption of relations between the two countries. Evidently, the lawyers of the released citizen thanked Trump on Monday in a statement for the "change in diplomatic strategy" of the White House.

The US president has sent all his heavyweights in international conflict engineering to Riyadh: Secretary of State Marco Rubio; National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. All of them were commissioned at the beginning of his term in January to resolve the two wars he promised to solve on the "first day" of his term: Gaza and Ukraine. The three delegates met on Monday with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who also received Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday.

Rubio arrives at the meeting with high expectations and his feet on the ground. According to his statements, it is an evaluation contact, and in the coming days, it will be known whether the rapprochement process is "serious or not." White House sources insist that the phone conversation between Trump and Putin last Wednesday, which lasted an hour and a half, had a somewhat informal character and that the two leaders only agreed that it is necessary to unblock the situation. The war enters its fourth year with an intolerable number of dead and wounded and massive territorial destruction reminiscent of the worst tragedies of World War II and former Yugoslavia.

Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledges 40,000 dead and 60,000 missing on the Ukrainian side, but experts believe the figure falls short. Moscow remains silent about its casualties, which will also be catastrophic. And neither country shows signs that anything will change on the battlefield in the near future. Precisely, one of the keys Donald Trump clings to in order to end the military path defended by his predecessor and allies.

The White House considers that Tuesday's meeting will determine whether the Kremlin is bluffing and only trying to buy time and break its global isolation – even if only temporarily – or is determined to end a bloody and economically costly war. Marco Rubio assures that if the talks are "serious," then Europe will be called upon, just as the negotiations will include President Zelensky, with whom the delegation will meet this Wednesday. "Of course, everything that happens will involve Ukraine," a government spokesman has made clear.

The State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, who is also in Riyadh, told the media yesterday that the rapprochement between the US and Russia "is a unique situation involving unique men." She also highlighted Trump's ability to address conflicts in "weeks" that "would take months or years to resolve." In the United States, the president's MAGA movement rejoices, thinking that his intervention in Gaza and now in Ukraine faithfully fulfills its founding principles of making the country of stars and stripes "first" and "great again."

In contrast, more progressive figures question whether the friendly approach to the Russian president signifies more a sign of weakness from his US counterpart, who has instead shown himself to be much tougher with Mexico, Canada, and the dispute with Denmark over Greenland or has not hesitated to threaten the EU with a tariff storm. Other columnists highlight this Tuesday whether Trump's real purpose lies solely in restoring relations with the superpower, ignoring Europe and Ukraine. Less than a week ago, in his avalanche of online messages, he even suggested that the G8 format should be restored with his inclusion once again in the club of the world's most powerful countries.

Lavrov negotiates in Riyadh with Yury Ushakov. At 77, he was ambassador to the US between 1998 and 2008. Today, he is one of Putin's main foreign policy advisors. Days before the invasion of Ukraine, he denied US intelligence and government reports that the Kremlin was preparing to occupy the country. It seems that the two high-ranking officials have traveled with very high expectations and are pursuing an emerging broad-spectrum commitment with Washington, which would range from the gradual lifting of sanctions to the resumption of diplomatic relations. This is no minor goal. Reopening the link with the US is a long-desired objective for Putin to demonstrate to the world that his country's isolation has been broken and to sell it to his country and, above all, to the businessmen and oligarchs from whom he will request to be exempted from their sanctions.