US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will hold talks on 23 July on the sidelines of the ASEAN ministerial gathering in Manila, with the war in Ukraine set to dominate the agenda. Both sides confirmed the meeting, which marks the highest-level direct contact since the stalled US-brokered peace push earlier this year. Rubio told reporters that the conflict had “impeded the ability of Russia and the United States to find areas of agreement on other topics” and that he would explore whether Washington could now play a constructive role in ending the fighting.

Viewed from Washington, the meeting is an opportunity to test whether a diplomatic opening exists. Rubio stated that the US is “probably the only country in the world” capable of mediating a settlement, a claim he suggested Moscow would accept. He framed the encounter as part of a necessary great-power dialogue, arguing that for the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals to refuse communication would be “reckless and irresponsible.” US officials have not disclosed the details of any new proposal, but Rubio recalled that even during the Cold War, Washington and Moscow maintained military and diplomatic channels to avert catastrophe.

Moscow’s approach, as outlined by Lavrov, is more circumspect. The Russian foreign minister said he intended to question Rubio about President Donald Trump’s recent assertion that a peace agreement was “closer than people realize” and to clarify whether the US administration had retreated from the proposals tabled at the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage in August 2025. In Moscow, senior lawmakers pushed back against Rubio’s claim of an exclusive American mediating role. Aleksey Chepa, first deputy chair of the Duma’s international affairs committee, said the conflict would end if Washington simply halted military and financial support to Kyiv, adding that Russia was fighting “the entire West.” A Russian security analyst, Konstantin Blokhin, predicted no breakthrough, noting that Trump had been in office for over a year without delivering a settlement.

The Anchorage summit, which both sides now acknowledge produced no formal agreement, remains the reference point for diplomatic efforts. Lavrov said Moscow continued to operate on the assumption that the US had not formally abandoned the “certain possibilities” discussed there. Since then, however, US-brokered talks have stalled, with Washington’s attention diverted by military strikes on Iran in late February. The Kremlin this week dismissed as “speculation” a Bloomberg report that President Vladimir Putin had hardened his negotiating stance in response to long-range Ukrainian attacks. The Manila meeting is not expected to yield immediate results, but it will serve as a barometer of whether the two powers can sustain a dialogue on Ukraine even as their broader relationship remains adversarial.