President Donald Trump said his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, advising Russian officials how to broach the topic of a Ukraine peace deal was a “standard thing.”
On Tuesday, an Oct. 14 call between Witkoff and Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov leaked to Bloomberg, allegedly shows Trump’s envoy suggesting how Putin should pitch a peace deal for the Russia-Ukraine war. When asked about the leak, Trump appeared unbothered, saying the suggestion was standard for negotiations.
“He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s going to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what a deal-maker does,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “You got to say, look, they want this, you got to convince them of this. I would imagine he’s saying the same thing to Ukraine because each party has to give and take.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung released a statement in the same vein as Trump, praising Witkoff’s work.
“This story 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,” he told the Washington Post when asked if the transcript of the Witkoff-Ushakov call was authentic.
The original draft of the 28-point peace plan, first revealed last week, included terms such as a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, the ceding of the entire Donbas region, a freezing of the front lines in Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts, a cap on the size of Ukraine’s military at 600,000 soldiers, and the reintegration of Russia into the global economy. Ukraine and its European allies proposed their own version of the peace deal, which the United States incorporated into a new draft.
When asked on Tuesday what concessions Russia was making, Trump rebuffed the question’s framing.
“Well, they’re making concessions. Their big concession is they stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land,” he said, adding that the war wouldn’t have happened if he were president.
The transcript of the five-minute phone call between Witkoff and Ushakov came days after the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Trump’s second term, the Gaza ceasefire, and triggered a particularly decisive phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which spurred plans for an aborted summit between the two in Budapest.
In the call, Witkoff advised Ushakov to tell Putin to begin the call by congratulating Trump.
“I would make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement, that you supported it, you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace, and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen. So I would say that. I think from that, it’s going to be a really good call,” he said.
Witkoff also suggested putting together a “20-point peace proposal, just like we did in Gaza. We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace, and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you.”
The special envoy also advised the Russians to adopt a more positive tone when appealing to Trump.
“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere. But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here. And I think, Yuri, the president will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal,” he said.
UKRAINE ALLIES VOICE CONCERNS OVER US PEACE PLAN AS NEGOTIATORS DESCEND ON GENEVA
Trump has vacillated between leaning more toward Russia and Ukraine throughout his second term, reaching a low with Ukraine in February when he kicked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out of the White House following a stormy public meeting and a high over the summer when he suggested that Ukraine could somehow push Russia back to the country’s 1991 borders.
Hope for peace has picked up once again, but the conflicting goals of Russia and Ukraine could once again derail it.