Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov are expected to meet on the margins of the ASEAN ministerial meetings in Manila this week, the first time the U.S. secretary of state and the Russian foreign minister will have sat down together since Kuala Lumpur last July.

Asked at the weekend whether he would meet Lavrov or Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, Rubio said he was open to it but was not sure the meeting had been "definitively arranged." The Kremlin's Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would welcome the contact, and foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the two sides were working on setting it up. None of it has been formally confirmed, which is normal for meetings arranged this way.

The subject is not in much doubt. Ukraine is the main item, the war still running while Washington and Moscow keep a channel open. Iran is on the table too, after the U.S.-Israeli war this summer. When the two last met, in Kuala Lumpur in July 2025, they covered Ukraine, Iran and Syria, and Manila will be similar.

A meeting on the sidelines is not a negotiation. It is a sign that the two governments are still talking, staged at one of the few forums where officials from rival powers can meet without the meeting itself becoming the event. The Philippines is chairing ASEAN this year and hosts it.

Most Western coverage will file this as ordinary diplomacy and keep the word "regime" for whichever government it likes least. We use it for both. These are two governments running wars, in Ukraine and now in Iran, and a handshake between their foreign ministers does not change that. It is worth watching. It is not progress, and we are not reading it as any, and nor should you.