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Contrary to the expectations of many experts who were predicting a "second Munich" from Vladimir Putin in New York, the Russian president made no grandiose proclamations during his address to the UN General Assembly. In fact, he was outwardly far milder than one might have imagined. By comparison, Obama's emotional speech, which was replete with strident but unsubstantiated claims, seemed sad, and occasionally even comical. For example, there was a passage about the ouster of Assad, but then less than a day later the US position flip-flopped.

Following the speeches, Putin and Obama sat down for a nearly two-hour conversation, after which the US president could not even rouse himself sufficiently to emerge and speak with journalists. And so it was left to the Russian president to conduct an exhaustive press conference on his own.

What is the takeaway from those last three days in September, which, according to many observers, lay to rest the idea of a unipolar world?

Firstly, the US is making profound changes in its attitude to Poroshenko's regime in Ukraine, assembling a reserve set of "politicians" and revoking its green light for military action by Kiev against the rebels. Incumbent PM Yatsenyuk is more likely to be replaced by Sergey Lyovochkin, former head of ex-president Yanukovych's administration and member of the "Opposition Bloc". Given the pacification of Kiev and the Southeast in accordance with the Kremlin's terms, the US withdrawal from Ukraine - and the withdrawal of Ukraine itself into the shadow of the global agenda - the US wager on the "Opposition Bloc" makes perfect sense.

The very next day in Minsk, Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Leonid Kuchma confirmed that weapons of a caliber less than 100 mm would be pulled back 15 km behind the front line, which actually signifies an end to hostilities. For the preceding seven months no one had been able to reach an agreement on this point. At the same time, Kiev admitted that it had committed war crimes in the Donbass: several stories on this topic appeared over the course of a single day in the Ukrainian media, from the admission that Oles Buzina had been killed by commandos from a special forces unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to an acknowledgment of crimes committed by "territorial" battalions. Obviously this would not have happened without an order from the American embassy. To this must be added the resignation of Evelyn Farkas, the Pentagon's top official overseeing military relations with Russia and Ukraine. Ms. Farkas had held that position for five years. She will officially leave her post in late October. It should be noted that this senior official had insisted on retaliatory measures against Russia's policy in Ukraine and had also facilitated the provision of financial aid to Kiev.

And all this occurred less than a day after Vladimir Putin's speech in New York and his meeting with Obama. That means that all these events were the result of a deal. And in fact, these are only the first fruits. Clearly there is more to come. But the trend is clear - the US has acknowledged the legitimacy of Russian claims that Ukraine is within Russia's sphere of interest.