America and Russia are finally talking to each other again
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu haven’t really been on speaking terms. That is, until last weekend, when the two defense chiefs conversed with each other twice in three days. The readouts released by the Defense Department are about as brief as brief can get. They don’t tell us much about what was said, other than the general observation that Austin, a former four-star army general, swatted away Moscow’s explanations for the war in Ukraine. What the conversations illustrate more than anything is just how rare they've been. Indeed, the reason why so many news outlets wrote about the Austin-Shoigu calls was because they were extraordinary.
