Dealmaking fallout: Leaked Witkoff call shows US deference

Last month, White House envoy Steve Witkoff had encouraging words for a senior aide to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. President Donald Trump, Witkoff said in a leaked phone call, “will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”

The transcript of the call, published by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, touched off a fury in Washington because it showed Witkoff appearing to coach the Kremlin on how to negotiate with Trump and undermine an upcoming visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

But it also laid bare something else: Trump’s stubborn determination to make some kind of deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, even if it is mostly on Russia’s terms — and despite months of false starts and rejections by Putin.

Along the way, Trump has stoked rare dissent among Republicans in Congress, shocked European allies and left many Ukrainians feeling abandoned by the United States. He has caused satisfaction in Russia, where stirring up discord within the Western alliance and anti-American sentiment in Ukraine is seen as a benefit in itself. And he has sparked a fierce debate in Washington, where his defenders contend that talking to Putin is the only way to stop Europe’s deadliest fighting since World War II.

“I’m not a massive fan of the president on a lot of things,” said Emma Ashford, a foreign policy scholar in Washington who supports limiting America’s global role. “But I think, actually, it’s to his credit that he keeps trying.”

As early as April, Trump was threatening to walk away from trying to end the war in Ukraine, warning that the United States might decide that “you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going just to take a pass.”

And yet, despite showing his frustration with both Putin and Zelenskyy, he kept coming back to seeking a Ukraine peace deal — spurred on by a mix of motives that appear to include both his horror at the loss of life and his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. His efforts included eight phone calls with Putin, five meetings between Witkoff and the Russian leader, and an in-person summit in Alaska.

Until last week, even past critics of Trump’s approach had praised his willingness to bring pressure to bear against Putin. The United States sanctioned Russia’s two biggest oil companies in October, crimping Moscow’s ability to pay for the war. American weapons and intelligence kept flowing to Ukraine. Trump called off a summit with Putin in Hungary five days after announcing it, declaring that it would be a “wasted meeting.”

American policy toward Ukraine was “far better than any of us could have dreamed of, given the ups and downs in the course of the administration’s handling of the Ukraine war,” said Andrew S. Weiss, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But the transcripts of leaked phone calls published by Bloomberg show that Witkoff and Russian officials were working behind the scenes in October on a new diplomatic push. On Oct. 14, Witkoff spoke to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, encouraging the Russian president to call Trump before an upcoming visit by Zelenskyy.

On Oct. 29, Bloomberg reported, Ushakov held a call with Kirill Dmitriev, an economic envoy for Putin who had just met with Witkoff in Miami. Dmitriev told Ushakov that he believed that a forthcoming US peace plan would be as close “as possible” to Russia’s proposals.

Trump defended Witkoff’s leaked conversation as a “standard thing” that “a dealmaker does.” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said the leak “proves one thing: Special envoy Witkoff talks to officials in both Russia and Ukraine nearly every day to achieve peace, which is exactly what President Trump appointed him to do.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll met with a Russian delegation in the United Arab Emirates to discuss the Trump administration’s latest peace plan, his spokesperson said. Trump posted on social media afterwards that there were “only a few remaining points of disagreement.” The president said the plan had been “fine-tuned, additional input from both sides,” after a 28-point plan leaked last week provoked outrage for promising much of what Putin has sought.

However, by Wednesday, a familiar dynamic was unfolding. In the wake of Trump’s past declarations that a deal was close, Russia appeared to be stalling for time.

The American peace plan “has not yet been discussed in detail with anyone,” Ushakov told a Russian reporter, according to Reuters. “We saw it, it was passed on to us, but there haven’t been any discussions yet.”

The negotiations are continuing, with Driscoll expected to travel back to Ukraine this week and Witkoff planning a new trip to Moscow. But the wisdom of Trump’s repeated engagement with Putin has already turned into one of the most divisive issues in Washington.

Eric Green, who served as the senior Russia director on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, said he believed that had Kamala Harris become president, the United States would have also sought greater engagement with Russia this year.

“There’s a way to do it without causing the level of concern among the Ukrainians and Europeans that we’ve caused,” he said, adding that the administration’s approach to the talks had also deepened the fissures between the United States and Europe and the United States and Ukraine.

“The Trump team’s ham-fisted approach to these negotiations has advanced all those Russian objectives,” Green said.

The New York Times