Steve Witkoff\u2019s sixth visit of the year to Moscow seems to have ended again with very little to show for it. The US special envoy was in the Russian capital, accompanied by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law, to meet President Vladimir Putin and present the latest version of a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. Little is currently known about the contents of the peace plan itself.<\/p>\n
Witkoff and Kushner spent five-hours with Putin in the Kremlin. Speaking after the meeting, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov called the summit \u2018very useful, constructive and substantive\u2019 but said that \u2018a compromise hasn\u2019t been found yet\u2019. Asked whether peace was closer or further away after the talks, Ushakov\u2019s answer was an unpromising \u2018definitely not further\u2019.<\/p>\n
As has become par for the course in Trump\u2019s diplomatic handling of the conflict, no Ukrainian representatives were present at the meeting \u2013 nor were any of Kyiv\u2019s European allies. Speaking bullishly earlier in the day, despite the mild cold that left him with a husky voice and cough, Putin claimed that Ukraine\u2019s European allies had \u2018sidelined themselves\u2019 from the negotiations because they were unhappy with the direction the conflict is taking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Accusing the continent of lacking a \u2018peaceful agenda\u2019, Putin warmed to his theme, adding that Europe was intent on sabotaging Trump\u2019s plan for peace. The Kremlin has steadily been pushing this narrative since the summer: that Ukraine and its allies, and not Russia, are the true obstacles to peace. If that wasn\u2019t clear enough, in answer to a follow-up question on the ever-rising tensions with Nato, he added: \u2018We are not planning to go to war with Europe, I\u2019ve already said this a hundred times. But if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The \u2018sabotage\u2019 Putin was likely referring to was the backlash to Witkoff\u2019s original 28-point peace plan, after it emerged it had been jointly authored with Russia\u2019s sovereign fund chief Kirill Dmitriev last month. The Americans had to go back to the drawing board, meeting with a Ukrainian delegation to scrap, rewrite and tweak points on the plan. Unsurprisingly, proposals to drastically cut the size of Ukraine\u2019s army, hand over the Donbas region to Russia and ban Kyiv from ever joining Nato were red lines the administration of Volodymyr Zelensky was unwilling to agree to. Talks between Witkoff and Ukrainian national security chief Rustem Umerov continued right up until Monday in Florida, just hours before Witkoff set off for Moscow. Neither side was able to confirm whether those points of contention were resolved.<\/p>\n
With the White House erratically swinging between supporting and publicly shooting down Ukraine\u2019s calls for a just peace, there is every chance that after last night whatever was settled between Witkoff and Umerov will not last. More than any of Trump\u2019s team, Witkoff appears to be particularly susceptible to the Kremlin\u2019s siren song of chummy future Russo-American collaboration. As the co-author of the original 28-point-plan which many of Ukraine\u2019s allies rightly saw as conceding to Putin\u2019s maximalist demands, few in Europe trust Witkoff to keep Ukraine\u2019s interests at heart.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was the first time Witkoff has met with Putin since leaked phone calls revealed he had been coaxing Ushakov \u2013 also present at yesterday\u2019s summit \u2013 on how to prep the Russian president for a phone call with Trump. Moreover, a report last week also revealed the details of a plan supposedly being drawn up by Witkoff, Kushner and Dmitriev to grant the US privileged access to Russian central bank assets \u2013 currently still frozen in Europe \u2013 after the war in Ukraine comes to an end.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the press after the talks finished, Ushakov was reluctant to give too much away. \u2018Some American proposals [for a peace settlement] appear more or less acceptable, but they need to be discussed. Some of the formulations we were offered are unacceptable. Therefore, the work will continue,\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier yesterday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declared that Russia did not intend to do negotiations through a \u2018megaphone\u2019. As with the deliberate aura of mystery that Moscow cultivated around the Alaskan t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate between Trump and Putin in August, this could suggest a tactic to hide the fact that the Kremlin is potentially considering rejecting the terms brought by Trump\u2019s representatives. Any hint to the Americans that Russia, and not Ukraine (as the Kremlin would have Trump believe), is the true hurdle to a peace deal would bring the ruse crashing down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shortly after their meeting in the Kremlin drew to a close, Witkoff and Kushner departed for Europe \u2013 reportedly Brussels \u2013 where they will meet with Zelensky today to brief him on yesterday\u2019s developments. It is safe to assume that only after Zelensky has been briefed by Witkoff and Kushner will Ukraine\u2019s European allies find out how the plan for peace has evolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, it is clear that even the White House sees yesterday\u2019s talks as just one more of many meetings over Ukraine\u2019s future to come. Having abruptly set a deadline last month for striking a peace deal by 27 November, Trump gave the clearest indication yet over the weekend that he had dialled back the time pressure: \u2018I don\u2019t have a deadline\u2019 for the war being over, he said. When that moment is likely to come \u2013 and at what cost to Ukraine \u2013 will become clearer in the hours and days ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Witkoff\u2019s sixth visit of the year to Moscow seems to have ended again with very little to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-609108","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\/115654518837130969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609108","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=609108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}