Russia back at the table with us

The view of the high Russian and American officials around a giant negotiating table is extraordinary.

For many, most Ukrainians will have been very difficult to take.

In Saudi Arabia, Moscow achieved something important: after three years of total war against its neighbor and insulation of the West, he returned to the “upper table” of global diplomacy.

Not only that, Russia looked for everyone as if it were the one who called the shots.

Although Air Raid sirens continue to play in Ukraine, that is exactly the image that Moscow wants to project.

This was not a defeated Russia, forced to the negotiating table. It was more as if the United States invited the aggressor to establish its terms.

It is true that US officials entered the process saying that they wanted to feel Russia, verify if it is peace.

But Donald Trump had already released his conclusions. Last week, after talking to Vladimir Putin on the phone, he announced that the Russian leader “wants to see people stop dying.”

Trump could have answered telling him to retire to all his troops.

Instead, he clearly wants to reach an agreement with Moscow to end the war, since he promised the voters, and move on.

After more than four hours of conversations in Riad, the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, went to the press and announced the first steps towards the negotiations, with teams that will be formed on both sides.

He had concluded that Russia was ready to participate in a “serious process” to end the war.

But why was he so sure?

On the other side of the table was Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, still under sanctions so the United States Treasury called the “brutal war of choice” of Russia.

When Lavrov met the Russian media, he told them that the United States had proposed a moratorium to attack the energy infrastructure.

“We explain that we have never in danger of the civil energy supply and we only point to what serves directly to the Ukraine military,” was the minister’s response.

That is not true.

I have personally walked through the ruins of civil power plants that have been directly attacked by Russian missiles.

This is the country with which the United States is trying to commit, although there is extensive evidence that you cannot trust it.

Russia has also shown zero sign of granting any land: why would it do so, when the Trump administration already agreed that Ukraine will never join NATO, as Moscow demands and will not recover its occupied land?

That is why, for the allies of Ukraine, it will not only be the image of American and Russian officials sitting in the brilliant Saudi table that shook. It is also as they talked.

“Being on the ground” for future investments sounds like a promise to eliminate sanctions: there are no accounts for the war of aggression of Russia, then, only reward.

These are, of course, the first first days.

But in Moscow, state officials and media feel the beginning of Russia’s return to where he believes he belongs: face to face with the United States, as an equal.