America Went to Saudi Arabia for A Meeting With The Russians

Morning. For the new folks, the format is simple; I read the top story in the New York Times each morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. Do please recommend the newsletter to your friends because once I have a thousand subscribers, I can make a dollar a day in advertising. That’s enough to buy almost three eggs!

Today’s lead story is a real joy. My wife asked me this morning, “do you ever look at the front page of the newspaper and think, ‘oh, wow, I can’t wait to write about this one!'“ and in honest reflection I told her that “ever since I started doing this, the front page story has been completely horrendous.” There hasn’t been, like, one story about how America won a medal at something or rescued a cat.

Speaking of which, do you remember when the king of Saudi Arabia had a critical journalist dismembered, and the U.S. was under pressure to sever diplomatic ties? Well. That didn’t happen. Instead, it seems the Saudis hosted the U.S. and Russia in Riyadh yesterday around a very heavy-looking wooden table featuring some of the most Bond Villan-ish swivel chairs they could find:

Here are reporters Anton Troianovski and Ismaeel Near:

One notable absence around the table was President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who canceled his own planned visit to Saudi Arabia. Russia, meanwhile, emphasized the importance of American oil interests in its territories. Companies like Exxon Mobil lost $300 billion by leaving Russia amid outrage over Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, they said. And the plan from here is simple: normalize diplomatic relations, plan for the end of the Ukraine war, and do more business together.

It all sounds terribly easy, when you put it like that. And from a PR perspective, everybody present seems keen to have presented things like a meeting of Deloitte consultants:

Europe was “confused and concerned” by the talks, and the Saudi’s have positioned Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed, as “a global leader with influence that extends beyond the Middle East.”

Here’s my father working in the streets of Riyadh in the early 1970s. He and my mother lived in the country for three years before moving to Southeast London and starting a family. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia paid for more than half our house. My parents used to shop at Bin Laden’s, the local grocery store. I don’t know much more than that, but I find this photograph fascinating. My dad looks so cool. He learned Arabic and took up horse riding, which for a boy from Middlesbrough was unusual. He won a dressage competition. These details come to me through the ether and down the years like things from another universe.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reflecting on Mr. Zelensky’s decision not to go to Saudi Arabia, after all. He told the New York Times “I do not like coincidences,” implying, perhaps, that it would be easier on the peace talks if he ended up in pieces like Jamal Khasoggi.

For those keen to gloss over the details I’ve been reading the accounts of Mr. Khashoggi’s murder. The most glaring thing, to me, is that Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Istanbul was full of microphones which captured a lot of gruesomeness:

Perhaps most interestingly was then-President Donald Trump’s description of the murder as “the worst cover-up in history.” Although he certainly knows a thing or two about cover-ups. In hindsight one wonders if his implication at the time was that they simply should have done a better job concealing what happened?

Mr. Trump yesterday accused Ukraine of starting the war.

Zelensky responded by asking the Trump administration to respect the truth and avoid disinformation in discussing a war that began with the Russian invasion of his country.

Agreed.

With a million people dead over three years, you’d expect people to want to stick to the facts, wouldn’t you? Really. Wouldn’t you?

Please do talk to a friend or two about all this.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.