As senior U.S. and Russian negotiators begin talks early next week in Geneva, the makings of a first-step-in-the-right-direction deal are already at hand. And for this we can thank Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin for serious, attentive, one-to-one conversations in the past several weeks.

You don't need a degree in Kremlinology or tea leaves to understand how this came about and what led to the Biden-Putin talks: in one key respect the second (Dec. 7, virtual) was a carbon copy of the first (June 16 in Geneva).

Both came at Biden's initiative, after Russia moved tens of thousands of troops near the border with Ukraine ready to stave off, or respond to, Ukrainian government threats to take back the Donbass and Crimea. By April 2021, things had come to a head, culminating in President Biden's strange call to President Putin on April 13. (It is a safe guess that it was Putin who called first and left a "voicemail" saying: "Your unleashed Ukrainians and the American crazies abetting them are playing with fire; please call me – and quickly").