As various international peace initiatives have sought a political solution to the Syrian crisis, the most recent tangible breakthrough came from someplace new. On July 9, the long-awaited meeting between the presidents of Russia and the United States took place on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where the two sides reaffirmed a recently reached cease-fire for southern Syria.

A day after the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia will continue cooperating with the United States on the de-escalation zones in southern Syria. He further pointed out that Russia, the United States and Jordan will establish a center in Amman to coordinate all the details of the zones.

The very fact that the US-Russian truce initiative has survived its first week of implementation suggests that this time the two major powers have more incentive to cooperate on their areas of shared interests regardless of how partial and non-inclusive they could be.

The significance of the recent cease-fire agreement becomes clearer given the latest round of negotiations being brokered by Iran, Russia and Turkey in Astana, Kazakhstan. The July 4-5 gathering stopped short of reaching an agreement, as Ankara reportedly objected to some details of the de-escalation zones. At the same time, the other main international peace initiative on Syria, namely the UN Geneva talks held July 10, has also failed to make a real breakthrough. Those talks did not even manage to bring representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition to the same table for direct negotiations.