While The US President Donald Trump and the mainstream media remained engaged in a bitter fight over the President’s and his aides’ connections with the Russians pre and post-election, a top diplomatic meeting took place between the US secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. This is yet another indication that despite all the theatrical surrounding Russia in Washington, efforts to make the relations normal between the two most powerful countries in the world are already underway.

Not many details of the duo have yet to emerge but it has become known that after meeting with Mr. Lavrov, secretary Tillerson said that Washington is ready to work with Kremlin if there were areas of cooperation, however, he stressed that Russia needs to fulfill its commitments over the conflicts in Ukraine. In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, which led to the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the United States and the European Union.

In recent days, United States’ U.N. envoy Nikki Haley have said that Russia needs to return Crime to Ukraine and it was confirmed by the White House chief correspondent that she was speaking on behalf of her government. In response to that, Russians have pointed out that the people of Crimea voted to join Russia while abandoning Ukraine and pointed the validity of this citing US constitution.

It is far from clear that how these two global superpowers can actually reconcile. Perhaps, it would be clearer once the two leaders; Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meets before the next G20.