Russia offered the United States a deal: Moscow would stop providing military intelligence to Iran if Washington would end its intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Both would walk away from one of their respective active-conflict partners at the same moment, in a synchronized withdrawal of support across two separate theaters. The Trump administration said no — but the fact that the offer was made at all is a revealing data point about how the Kremlin is thinking about the intersection of these two wars.
Politico reported Monday, citing multiple US officials, that the proposal was floated through back-channel diplomatic contacts in the days following the US-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities that began February 28. Moscow framed the offer as a confidence-building measure: a symmetrical de-escalation that neither side would have to make unilaterally. The implicit logic was that the Iran war and the Ukraine war are not independent events but connected pressure points in a broader negotiation between Washington and Moscow, and that simultaneous concessions could reduce tension on both fronts.
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