I will add a little color here.

Fully deniable, check.

These are called track two. They are a thing. A lot of these happened on the way to Paris when we pulled out of Vietnam. And as much public condemnation, you can bet they were debriefed for any useful information. We do these all the time with hostile regimes.

It’s not quite shuttle diplomacy…those are open and acknowledged. But they are exactly a tool. They also usually fail. Their value is in whatever they gleaned. Notice, this happened in New York, not Moscow. And the Russian telegram reaction is a chorus of fake news…that is already a benefit as propaganda. Meaning, Russians are even less happy than Ukrainians.