\n Some European officials said they found the revelation galling, but not surprising. Trump, meanwhile, dismissed concerns.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cHe\u2019s gotta sell this to Ukraine, he\u2019s gotta sell Ukraine to Russia. That\u2019s what a deal maker does,\u201d Trump told reporters last week.\n <\/p>\n
\n Asked Monday about what the Trump expects from the upcoming meeting in Moscow, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the administration as \u201cvery optimistic.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ve put points on paper,\u201d she said during a press briefing. \u201cThose points have been very much refined. But as for the details, I will let the negotiators negotiate. But we do feel quite good, and we\u2019re hopeful that this war can finally come to an end.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Joining Witkoff trying to sell a deal will be Kushner.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kushner, who has sat in the US delegation for two high-level meetings in as many weeks with Ukrainian officials, has re-emerged as a key figure in the administration\u2019s diplomatic efforts.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kushner does not have an official US government role. He came back into the public eye as he and Witkoff negotiated a ceasefire plan for Gaza.\n <\/p>\n
\n On the heels of that tenuous truce, he has been quietly working alongside the businessman-turned-envoy on efforts to end the war in Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with his role tell CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n White House officials and people close to Kushner argue there wasn\u2019t a specific point at which it was decided that the president\u2019s son-in-law would begin working on Russia-Ukraine matters. Instead, they argued it was a natural progression of the work he has been doing since even before Trump took office, when he helped advise some administration officials during the presidential transition process on matters pertaining to the Middle East.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Then-Senior](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-1228343380.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Kushner, sources said, is seen by Trump to be his \u201ccloser\u201d on foreign policy deals. One source close to him described him as having good ideas on how to get things unstuck.\n <\/p>\n
\n Sources close to him also argue he has a rare quality that few people even at the highest echelons of the president\u2019s circle don\u2019t possess: Trump\u2019s full trust.\n <\/p>\n
\n That trust, the sources argued, has been crucial to signaling to foreign leaders that when he is involved, they are essentially dealing with Trump directly.\n <\/p>\n
\n But there are dangers to relying on such a small circle, as Trump has, the former senior State Department official said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cYou make mistakes, and you don\u2019t have a wide enough circle to challenge thinking, to present opposite points of view,\u201d they said. \u201cYou can run yourself down a fairly narrow alley without understanding what the alternatives might have been.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump \u201cbelieves that his emissaries, whoever they might be, if they\u2019re seen as being directly connected to him and articulating his viewpoint, then that\u2019s what\u2019s important,\u201d the official told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n When it comes to Russia-Ukraine negotiations, \u201cthis is the President turning to people that he knows well, that he trusts, he has a level of confidence, and he believes have been successful in other lines of business, and can certainly be successful on this.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump\u2019s \u201cdrone guy,\u201d Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, has also emerged as a key figure in the renewed negotiations to end the war, though he is not due to head to Moscow.\n <\/p>\n
\n Driscoll, a friend of Vice President JD Vance, has held a series of meetings with top Ukrainian officials in Kyiv and Geneva as the administration has pushed them to accept a deal to end the war. He also met with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi.\n <\/p>\n
\n Leslie Shedd, a former senior adviser on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who now serves as a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that he has \u201creally become a rising star in the administration.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Former career diplomat Daniel Fried said that \u201chaving Driscoll there\u201d as \u201csomebody who is trusted in Trump World is important.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n However, \u201cyou need somebody with Driscoll who understands the details,\u201d said Fried, who was US ambassador to Poland. \u201cThe Russians can be expected to throw various curveballs disguised as sweeteners. You need somebody who can detect the stink bombs in the nice wrapping.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Kushner\u2019s presence on the team working on Ukraine seemed to reflect Trump\u2019s growing frustration over his inability to quickly bring the years-long conflict to end and his desire to translate his approach during the Gaza deal to Russia-Ukraine.\n <\/p>\n
\n To the Ukrainians, it also signaled that Trump believed that a deal was within reach.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe Ukrainians think that Trump views Kushner as the closer. They hope that Jared can close the gap, they are working with the administration on this, but they don\u2019t think it is on the finish line,\u201d said a source close to the Ukrainians.\n <\/p>\n
\n However, some have raised questions about Kushner\u2019s role in the negotiation process as the administration works to broker a deal with a Russian government that even Trump himself has said does not seem to want peace.\n <\/p>\n
![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/gettyimages-2229609201.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n One European official noted that it\u2019s \u201cnot clear what is his mandate or boundaries.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard that he\u2019s a very quick learner, but one would expect a member of the negotiating team to have deep knowledge of the issues ahead of attending the meeting rather than learning on the job,\u201d they said. \u201cObviously it\u2019s quite extraordinary to have someone with no official position as a member of the negotiating team.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In late October, Witkoff and Kushner met with sanctioned Russian businessman Kirill Dmitriev met in Miami, a source familiar with the meeting told CNN. Dmitriev, like Kushner and Witkoff, is not a conventional diplomat but has close ties to Putin and therefore is viewed as a viable intermediary.\n <\/p>\n
\n Kushner and Dmitriev, a graduate of Harvard Business School, have reportedly known each other for years. The two men worked together during the first Trump term, one source close to the White House said.\n <\/p>\n
\n What emerged weeks after that meeting was a 28-point draft denounced by European officials and members of Congress as a capitulation to Russia.\n <\/p>\n
\n The White House said the draft had been worked on by both Witkoff and Rubio. It underwent changes during a meeting in Geneva between top US and Ukrainian officials in late November, Rubio said at the time. There was continued progress in the discussions in Florida, the top US diplomat said Sunday. Rubio led the delegation at both of those meetings.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis is delicate, it\u2019s complicated, there are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there\u2019s another party involved here that\u2019ll have to be a part of the equation \u2013 and that\u2019ll continue later this week when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow,\u201d Rubio said Sunday.\n <\/p>\n
\n CNN\u2019s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Trump administration rushes to secure a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-606397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115647429242680323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}