“Washington hopes that a set of mutual commitments to transparency in military activities and bans on the deployment of certain weapons systems along the NATO-Russia frontier will persuade Moscow to defuse the current crisis. So far, however, the talks have not borne out those hopes,” CFR’s Thomas Graham writes.
 
“Analysts said that not even members of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s inner circle—let alone [Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov, who led Russia’s delegation at this week’s Geneva talks—were likely to know how seriously Mr. Putin is contemplating full-scale war with Ukraine. Nor would they know what American concessions he is prepared to accept in order to defuse the crisis,” the New York Times’ Anton Troianovski writes.