When he meets with his Russian despot counterpart, the senile demented Trump listens, absorbs, adopts then blurts out whatever inanities Putin tells him. With Trump it's Alzheimer's in reverse: Whereas patients have a bad short-term memory (they don't remember what they did 5 minutes ago), Trump remembers ONLY what he's told 5 minutes ago.
We now learn that his "special" envoy to Russia, the highly incompetent real-estate charlatan Steve Wit-off, is so cozy with his Russian interlocutors that, instead of working to secure a deal that remains within the bounds of legal international relations, he gives workshops in Moscow in which he instructs the Russians on how to approach and psychologially deal with the difficult, unstable, degenerating old monkey in the White House.
Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize at any cost. He wants a deal, ANY DEAL, on Ukraine regardless of whether the deal will hold or ensure permanent peace, stability and sovereignty for Ukraine. Trump doesn't want peace. He just wants the announcement of a deal so he can claim, like the intellectual beggar that he is, that he made peace between Russia and Ukraine. Again, "form over susbtance", "perception is everything"... are the principles of crooked American business that Trump claims to adhere to and put in practice in the world of politics.
"I don't care if Russia invades Poland, the Baltic states or even Ukraine again... Just get me any fu - - ing deal with Putin so we can make the announcement", I can hear him yell at Witkoff.
===============================================
A Stunning Leak Just Shed New Light on How Cozy the Trump Admin Really Is With Russia
Fred Kaplan
Wed, November 26, 2025
The transcript of a leaked phone conversation between President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and a Kremlin adviser—published in Wednesday’s Bloomberg News—might stand as the most remarkable security breach of the year, in several ways. And the document proves, once and for all, that in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Witkoff is acting as a Russian tool.
First, Trump is left with two choices: to either fire Witkoff, who is not a formally appointed official anyway, or essentially confirm that he is acting as a Russian tool as well. The fact that Trump has decided to send Witkoff to Moscow for further talks in the coming days suggests the latter.
Second, the transcript of a follow-on phone conversation between two Kremlin advisers discussing the Witkoff call—also published by Bloomberg—confirms that the 28-point “peace” plan, which Witkoff put on the table last week, was in fact largely a Kremlin product designed to favor Russia’s position. (After everyone noticed that this was the plan’s effect, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with European and Ukrainian diplomats, greatly revised the plan to make it more balanced.)
Finally, the leak is extremely unusual and possibly unprecedented. The National Security Agency and several foreign intelligence agencies routinely intercept and often record phone conversations with Russian officials. But I cannot think of a single instance when a transcript of such a conversation—which, by nature, is very highly classified—has been leaked to the press. (Some transcripts have been declassified years or decades after the fact, and, even then, only long after the issue being discussed is no longer relevant.)
Whoever leaked this—and it could have come from any number of places—clearly had an agenda: to expose, and thus help build opposition to, the dominant pro-Russia faction within the Trump administration (especially Witkoff and his most outspoken allies, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth); or to embarrass Trump himself, either for its own sake or as a way of pushing him into a more pro-Ukraine stance.
The first conversation, between Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov, a top Kremlin foreign-policy adviser, took place on Oct. 14, soon after Trump wrapped up the ceasefire in Gaza. The chat opens with Ushakov congratulating Witkoff and Witkoff saying he wants to use that settlement as a model to end the war in Ukraine.
Witkoff says, “I told the president that you—that the Russian Federation has always wanted a peace deal. That’s my belief. … You know I have the deepest respect for President Putin.” He then suggests that the two of them line up a phone conversation between their bosses. Witkoff advises that in the call, Putin should butter up Trump as “a man of peace.”
He notes that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is coming to the White House three days hence, then says, “I think, if possible, we have the call with your boss before that … meeting.”
Ushakov seems surprised by the suggestion but agrees—and, in fact, Trump did talk with Putin before his meeting with Zelensky, which put the Ukrainian president in a somewhat reactive, even defensive position.
Witkoff then returns to the topic of writing some sort of peace deal: “Me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done—Donetsk” (i.e., Ukraine giving up the eastern province of Donetsk) “and maybe a land swap somewhere.” He adds that Trump “will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”
It has since been reported that Witkoff, along with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a Kremlin advisor named Kirill Dmitriev, wrote the 28-point plan over the next few days in Florida.
Bloomberg’s transcription of the second phone call tells us that the plan was largely a Kremlin concoction. The second phone call, made soon after the Witkoff call, was between Ushakov and Dmitriev. (The transcript, as reprinted, is in the original Russian and in English translation.) It reveals the two Russians plotting how to draw up the plan.
Dmitriev says that he’s about to pass on a draft of a peace plan to Witkoff and Kushner. Ushakov says, “Well, we need the maximum, don’t you think? … Otherwise, what’s the point of passing anything on?”
Dmitriev suggests handling it a bit more subtly. “No, look,” he says, “I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal. And let them do it [as if it’s] their own. … I don’t think they’ll take exactly our position, but at least it’ll be as close to it as possible.”
Ushakov says he’s nervous that they might not agree with it or that they “might twist it later …there is that risk.”
Dmitriev replies, “Yeah, it seems to me that you can talk later with Steve about this paper. We will do everything neatly.”
And that’s how Witkoff and Kushner—working entirely on a back channel with Dmitriev, having no formal input from Rubio or any professional diplomats or Russia specialists inside the administration (if there are any remaining)—presented the 28-point plan, which was denounced by everyone as a recipe for Ukraine’s surrender.
The plan, as they wrote it, would have required Ukraine to give up Crimea and the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, to withdraw its troops from those and all other contested areas, to reduce the size of its army by one-third, to change its constitution to forbid ever joining NATO, and to stop firing missiles into Russia (with no reciprocal restraint from Russia). Meanwhile, it would have let Russia rejoin the G8 (from which it had been expelled after invading Ukraine) and be reintegrated into the world economy, with most sanctions dropped. It also noted that Russia would be “expected not to invade neighboring countries” but did not explicitly bar it from doing so.
If Trump, Witkoff, or anyone else is embarrassed by the Bloomberg leak, or even shocked by the implied security breach, they aren’t showing it. The White House neither disputed the transcript’s authenticity nor saw anything wrong with Witkoff’s actions. Trump himself said of the report, “It’s a standard thing. … This is what a dealmaker does,” adding that he likely made similar comments to Ukrainians.
But in fact, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll was dispatched to speak with Ukrainians, and, according to a report in the Financial Times, Driscoll spent his meeting in Kyiv presenting the 28-point plan as an ultimatum. At the time, Trump was doing the same in the White House, giving Zelensky till Thanksgiving to take the deal or to keep fighting “his little heart out.” After the plan came under heavy criticism, Trump changed his tune, saying the draft wasn’t final and the deadline wasn’t firm.
Still, Trump is sending Witkoff to Moscow, and Driscoll to Kyiv, for more talks, and has decided to stay out of any negotiations personally until a deal is ready to be signed. Putin has said that he liked the original draft (no surprise, since his own men drafted it) but has rejected the revision.
The war rages on, peace is not at hand, Team Trump is in shambles, and, for better or for worse, the highest secrets in the land are not secure.
No comments:
Post a Comment