Rolling Stone has a detailed report on how America pressed forward confidently on chemical weapons cleanup after getting blank stares from their Russian counterparts.

In Geneva, as the team supporting Kerry was hammering out the details, it seemed like Russia had already lost interest in the endeavor. “We give them a piece of paper that says what we think the plan should be, and they just go, ‘Yeah, that looks fine to us,’ ” Cinnamon, who’d flown to Europe to aid negotiations, recalls. “They didn’t even look at it. They’re like, ‘I don’t care. You guys are going to fail. Write whatever you want.’ We kind of look at each other like, ‘Well, if we can write whatever we want, then . . . let’s just go for -everything.’ ”

This was perceived as indifference or apathy at the time because Americans vastly over-estimated the competence of Russian officials. The reason “they didn’t even look at it” and were like “don’t care” or “you guys are going to fail” is actually explained by basic incompetence of the Russian dictatorship.

It would be like showing the same things to someone in the Trump family.

Perhaps most interesting is that this amazing security operations success story both gives foreshadowing of Russian incompetence during the invasion of Ukraine, and also is done in a very modest context. The architects even say it would be awkward to boast about it while other work needs to be done. The best operators do not talk loudly about American operations.