Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Moscow believes the United States is deeply involved in Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory. Not as a supplier of weapons - nobody has been hiding that for a long time - but as a participant in the preparation and the execution.

"We have put a series of questions to the State Department, including about the intelligence data and about the fact that the US is heavily involved in preparing and carrying out attacks on civilian targets deep inside Russian territory. We are waiting for an answer," Lavrov told Russian state television.

An accusation packaged as a question

The form here is everything. This is not a note, not an ultimatum, not a protest - it is a "series of questions" and a "we are waiting". The softest possible diplomatic wrapping for the heaviest possible accusation: that one nuclear power is directly taking part in attacks on another. When somebody picks the form this carefully, it usually means the answer does not matter all that much to them.

Lavrov stressed at the same time that Russia is not issuing Washington any ultimatums about ending support for Kyiv as a precondition for talks. President Vladimir Putin, he said, remains ready to receive the American negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner - though he immediately added a question about what they would actually bring.

This is the hard core of the whole story. Lavrov said that halting the conflict along the current line of separation between Russian and Ukrainian forces is out of the question, citing historical responsibility and the victims of terrorist attacks. In other words: any proposal beginning with "freeze where you are" is dead before it is spoken.

So the door is open for negotiators, while the one thing genuinely up for negotiation - the line - has been declared untouchable. How many times have we seen that on this continent? The talks exist so that talks exist, not so that anything ends.