With the globe's attention focused on the now almost two week long ongoing Iran war, Moscow is busy in the sidelines making strides to improve bilateral relations with the United States, while demonstrating how vital Russia is to global energy markets.
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's directly appointed special envoy, held a meeting in the US "with the heads of the working group on economic cooperation between Russia and the United States," according to his Telegram statement and fresh reporting in Bloomberg.
Dmitriev and US officials discussed "promising projects that could contribute to the restoration of Russian-American relations, as well as the current crisis in global energy markets" - according to the top Kremlin official's statement.
The US-Russia meeting comes on the heels of Washington having declared a temporary ease in targeted energy sanctions earlier in the Iran conflict, allowing India to buy Russian oil currently stranded at sea.
The US Treasury Department Secretary described the one-month waiver as a "deliberate short-term measure" to allow oil to keep flowing in the global market, in an effort to free up millions of barrels of oil and gas stuck in transit near the Strait of Hormuz.
The ongoing blockage of the strait impacts nearly half of all Indian oil and gas imports. Meanwhile, overnight Reuters has reported that "Iran has laid about a dozen mines in Strait of Hormuz, sources say."
Amid the energy market mayhem and deep uncertainly, Dmitriev is offering Russia as a key partner in stabilizing the energy crisis:
"Many countries, especially the United States, are beginning to better understand the key, systemically important role of Russian oil and gas in ensuring global economic stability, as well as the ineffectiveness and destructive nature of sanctions against Russia," Dmitriev stated.
With the Iran war and energy in the foreground, the over four-year long Russia-Ukraine war has largely receded into the background, in terms of global media coverage.
Moscow likely sees this as a great advantage - no longer facing the same avalanche of pressure and daily Washington condemnation. Now, it's more likely to be that the Trump administration needs Russia if it hopes to manage oil prices and the fallout from Trump's Iran gambit.
Dmitriev has also recently stated that everything happening with oil prices demonstrates that "sanctions do not work and are counterproductive."