On February 23, national security advisor Jake Sullivan was scheduled to meet Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy advisor to Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki. But, according to three sources, both in Moscow and Washington, that meeting was canceled at the last minute—not because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Putin had planned for the following day, but because Ushakov came down with Covid. Otherwise, the meeting would have gone ahead. For Sullivan, who knew the invasion was coming, the planned conversation with Ushakov would have been yet another Hail Mary, last-ditch effort to stop a looming catastrophe—or, at the very least, a final warning to the Kremlin that there would be serious consequences. (A spokesperson for the National Security Council said this was “not accurate,” but did not clarify further.)