Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov agreed that they want to improve their relationships and then find a common place for peace in Ukraine, with NATO exclusion. Riyadh will say place with gardens and trees. The capital of Saudi Arabia has been transformed for international media into a … navel of Earth on Tuesday due to the meeting of the US and Russia Foreign Ministers who said it for more than four hours after years of diplomatic freezing.

Marco Rubio was quite satisfied with this contact, where the debate on Ukraine dominated without Ukraine.

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult route, but important. And President Trump is committed to putting an end to this conflict. And as he said when he was campaigning for the presidency, he wants to end in a fair way … Donald Trump is the only leader in the world to start this process and today was the first step in this processa”.

Step-by-step approach but at speed

Sergei Lavrov’s Russian counterpart has spoken of immediate steps to normalize the two countries’ relations, such as the mutual mission of new ambassadors and the formation of a process to settle the conflict in the near future. “The American side will announce who will represent Washington in this project. And as soon as we learn the name and position of the relevant representative, as President Putin told President Trump, we will immediately appoint our own participant in this process. And finally, we wish, as the procedures related to the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine will unfold, to create the conditions for our cooperation to be fully resumed and to extend to various areas.. “

NATO “No” in Kyiv

What was Moscow expected to justify a change of attitude. As all show, the US rejection of Ukraine’s prospect of NATO, as Lavrov pointed out by accident:

“We explained to our current interlocutors that we have carefully recorded that President Trump was in many cases the first of all Western leaders to say that Ukraine’s accession to NATO was one of the main reasons for what was happening, that he was one of his biggest mistakes. Biden and his government and that Trump as a president would not allow this to happen“

A ‘success’ for Putin

It is clear that if the NATO exclusion of Ukraine is finally sealed, Vladimir Putin will be able to argue that he has achieved a key goal, canceling a proclaimed plan for Europeans.

So what role does the two political leaders reserve for Europe? Rubio spoke of EU involvement at some point in the process: “The European Union should be on the table at some point because they have also imposed sanctions, but I suppose the point today is to set the goal and we agreed what the goal is.”

Sergei Lavrov, however, has shown absolutely negative about the possibility of involvement of European troops in Ukraine, something that the Europeans themselves have not ended up with each other.

“We explained today that the emergence of the armed forces from the same NATO countries, but with a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, nothing changes. Of course, this is unacceptable for us” The unanswered end and whether and how quickly the Trump-Putn meeting will take place that for many is more than a given.