Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited Washington, DC last December for a meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a visit to the Oval Office with President Donald Trump. This was Lavrov’s second such visit during the Trump administration; his first visit occurred in May 2017, when pictures emerged of him, Trump, and then-Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, yucking it up in the White House the day after Trump fired the head of the FBI, James Comey.

Since 2014 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has increasingly been focusing on the threat posed by Vladimir Putin. In response to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and ongoing violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the Donbas region, the Alliance is deploying four new battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. On June 17th, NATO concluded one of its largest military exercises to date, the 10-day Anakonda 2016 involving some 31,000 Alliance troops in Poland. Meanwhile, the NATO-Russia Council has been largely moribund except for one meeting this spring that produced very little.