Trump’s Ukraine peace talks advance amid leaked call

What happened

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration had made “tremendous progress” toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine. The original Moscow-tilted 28-point peace proposal “has been fine-tuned, with additional input from both sides,” he wrote on social media, and there are “only a few remaining points of disagreement.” Trump told reporters Tuesday night that his envoy Steve Witkoff would visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week, while Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will continue to meet with Ukrainian officials.

Trump shrugged off a leaked Oct. 14 phone call, published by Bloomberg on Tuesday, in which Witkoff coached Putin envoy Yuri Ushakov on selling Trump a Russia-friendly peace deal. “I haven’t heard it, but it’s a standard thing,” Trump told reporters. “He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what a dealmaker does.”

Who said what

“Momentum had been picking up over the U.S.-led negotiations,” The Washington Post said, “but a landing zone for a deal that can satisfy both sides remains extremely narrow.” Moscow and Kyiv are at odds over post-war security guarantees, and Trump’s plan calls on “Ukraine to concede the entirety of its eastern Donbas region, even though a vast swath of that land remains in Ukrainian control,” The Associated Press said.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“Giving up territory Russia hadn’t conquered” is one of Ukraine’s “red lines,” The Wall Street Journal said, but Witkoff suggested in his leaked call that losing the rest of the Donbas province of Donetsk was inevitable. “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,” Witkoff told Ushakov, according to the Bloomberg transcript. The call proves Witkoff “cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on social media. “Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired.”

What next?

Trump told reporters that his earlier Thanksgiving ultimatum for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to the deal was no longer operational, and the new “deadline for me is when it’s over.” He said on social media that he looked forward to “hopefully meeting” with Zelenskyy and Putin “soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages.”