Internet Connection Error in Cooperative

[NewUSerLostCone]

Hey Team,
great game, like it a lot.
When i try to join my friend (or he me) through invite and after i click "start mission", the one who joins gets the error attached in the image (Internet Connection Error: Pending ...). I and he both have good internet + we both have disabled firewall for the .exe (for all ports).
From what i've gathered there were already such issues back in 2023-2024 and it was because of EOS servers (viewtopic.php?t=1417 and others on steam).

What is the fix for this, are servers down or it's because of me? (I use the latest version from 25th Feb)

p.s. i've also found this post (viewtopic.php?t=1640), i'm in Germany and my friend also, his Epic account is registered in Ukraine, but afaik EPIC doesn't have any country restrictions there.