ONE OF THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (PART II)
- Paul Hansbury
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
In Part I, I argued that the current battlefield situation provides no real space for negotiating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. This is because there is no overlap between the settlements that might be acceptable to each side. Neither the 28-point plan from the US, nor the counterplan put forward by Europeans, is likely to provide the basis for a durable peace agreement in the current situation.
The 'concessions' in the original US plan are only concessions if you maintain that Russia has privileged rights in its neighbourhood – a 'sphere of influence' – and Ukraine, as a corollary, has limited sovereignty. The US plan emerged from discussions between the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, and Steve Witkoff (whose official role remains as Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East).
Suspicions are that the 28-point plan was largely drafted at a meeting in Miami at the end of October, where Dmitriev and Witkoff were joined by others including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. But the transcripts of two phone conversations, leaked and published by Bloomberg on Tuesday, give us an insight into the nature of discussions leading up to the Miami meeting. One call is between Witkoff and a Kremlin foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, the other was a call between Ushakov and Dmitriev.
There is good reason to assume that the transcript is authentic because Russia, rather than denying it, chose to describe the leak as 'unacceptable'.
The Witkoff-Ushakov call took place on 14 October. A day earlier, Trump had addressed the Israeli Knesset (parliament). He expressed gratitude to Witkoff for his ongoing work on the Russia-Ukraine peace deal:
