A behind-the-scenes effort by US and Russian diplomats may have preempted a new wave of tit-for-tat retaliations.

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After months of angry statements, diplomatic expulsions, and shuttered consulates, US and Russian officials have quietly put an end to the tit-for-tat retaliations between the two sides, and US officials are now considering reviving parts of a Russian proposal from March to strengthen military-to-military contacts.

The improvement in relations follows talks between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week. For weeks, US officials had braced for Moscow to take retaliatory measures against US facilities in Russia in response to Washington’s closure of a Russian consulate in San Francisco in late August. But following last week’s meetings, Moscow is signaling an end to the feud, and US officials are expressing cautious optimism about the two diplomats’ conversations. “They were able to exchange and operate with candor and make progress,” Tillerson aide R.C. Hammond told BuzzFeed News. “We’re encouraged about that.” In New York, Tillerson held two bilateral meetings with his Russian counterpart. But before his second meeting in Midtown’s luxurious Palace Hotel, Tillerson flipped the script and asked Lavrov if the two men could meet alone. That decision kept Under Secretary of State Tom Shannon, the top acting US official for Europe, Elisabeth Millard, and other US officials outside the room for 45 minutes while the two men talked privately. State Department officials declined to give a full readout of the conversations, but Lavrov came away from the meeting with an upbeat view of the US–Russia relationship. “[Trump] wants to have good relations with Russia, understanding that this would be in the American interest,” Lavrov said in an interview after the meeting. “What I feel talking to Rex Tillerson is that this is the position of the administration. They are not happy with the current state of relations.”

Alvaro Dominguez for BuzzFeed News Russia proposed resetting relations with the US in March.

Tillerson has long made stabilizing the US–Russia relationship a priority, but that goal was derailed this summer after Congress imposed new sanctions against Russia for meddling in the 2016 election. In response, Moscow ordered the expulsion of hundreds of US employees in Russia. The US subsequently closed three Russian facilities, including the consulate in San Francisco. Some US officials had expected Moscow then to restrict access to the US consulate in St. Petersburg, which has long been a target of both Russian spies and everyday vandals, or the US consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg. But the Kremlin appears resigned to merely threaten a lawsuit against the US for closing the San Francisco consulate, a somewhat docile response. Much of what Tillerson told Lavrov in the past week remains unknown, but one diplomatic source said the secretary conveyed to the Russians his support for meetings between Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, and their Russian counterparts. The Kremlin first pushed for those meetings in a secret proposal delivered to the State Department in March, but in the ensuing months, only Dunford took the initiative to meet with his Russian counterpart. It’s not clear how widely details of Tillerson’s meeting have been shared within the State Department. When asked about the discussion, Brian Hook, Tillerson’s right-hand man, pleaded ignorance. “I was not in the first part of the meeting,” Hook said at a press conference two days after the bilateral. “I don’t have a full readout of that meeting.” Analysts said Tillerson’s support for military-to-military interactions represented a carrot to the Russians, but one with limited risks. “I’m considered a Russia hawk but there’s no reason why we can’t have these meetings,” said John Herbst, a director at the Atlantic Council and a former foreign service officer. “You can be tough with the Russians and engage with them at the same time.”

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