At the beginning of August, the United States and Russia completed a prisoner exchange. The Western media obsessed over two details. One being the fact that it was the biggest prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia since the end of the Cold War. And second, that there was a gaping moral inequivalence between Putin and the prisoners he got back compared with the West and the prisoners they got back.

But there are two more significant details that the Western media ignored. The first is that the U.S. and Russia have practically not talked at all since the war in Ukraine began. During the Cold War, the two sides frequently communicated. Whereas during the Ukraine war, the lines of communication have been cut.