US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already spoken to his veteran Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov over the phone three days before the talks took place. He said after Tuesday’s meeting he was convinced Russia was ready for a “serious process” to end the war and the two countries would resume diplomatic relations.

Rubio has long sought an end to the war in Ukraine and voted against a $6bn US military aid package in 2024. He sees China as America’s biggest adversary and believes Beijing is happy for the US to be “bogged down in Europe”.

He has cautioned that “one meeting is not going to solve [the war]” and made clear that both Ukraine and Europe will have to be involved too: “No-one is being sidelined here.”

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz spoke after the talks of pushing for a permanent, not a temporary end to the war. But he suggested at the weekend that US deserves “some type of payback” for the billions it has paid out to Ukraine since it began.

He does not just believe that Europeans have to “own this conflict” in terms of future security guarantees. He also thinks Ukraine should share its mineral wealth in partnership with the US “in terms of their rare earths, their natural resources, and their oil and gas”.

Steve Witkoff is more of an unknown quantity. Although these were the first official talks between Russia and the US for almost two years, Witkoff was the man Donald Trump chose to send to Moscow only last week for talks with Vladimir Putin.

Ostensibly, he’s Trump’s Middle East envoy, but clearly the president’s former golf partner is far more significant than that and he is being seen as the president’s loyal and favoured dealmaker.

He was part of talks on forging Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas but was then sent to Russia to help with the exchange of US prisoner Marc Fogel for a Russian, Alexander Vinnik, in jail in America.