Behind the Scenes of Witkoff-Kushner negotiations with Putin that lasted for five hours

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues his tours of Western capitals in search of money and aid, and his parliament is unable to resume its sessions under the weight of the opposition’s blockade of its meeting platform to demand the dismissal of the government, all eyes are on Moscow, where Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s personal envoy, has arrived, accompanied for the first time by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as he awaits the outcome of their visit to the Kremlin and their talks with President Vladimir Putin.

The visit came after rumors that have often followed Witkoff since his first meetings with Putin, as Trump’s opponents have previously accused him of influencing the US president since the first meeting between the US and Russian presidents in the Finnish capital Helsinki in July 2019.

Witkoff had rejected Zelensky’s request to meet him in Dublin and cancelled a meeting with him scheduled for November in Türkiye.

Kushner’s joining Witkoff since the beginning of the Russian-US contacts came as a surprise to some observers, although others received him from the perspective of his consistency with the approach that has often defined the US president’s choice of his aides, aides, and team members from his close circle, whether family or work, with whom he is associated in the field of his financial and real estate activity.

There are also those who see this as an attempt to ward off the accusations that it has occurred, like President Trump, as its said, in the Russian president’s net.

However, the evidence says that the goal of Kushner’s participation is to accelerate the pace of negotiations and exploit personal channels of communication to advance the peace process, which was looking for a quick breakthrough, and that this aims to advance peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, taking advantage of Kushner’s personal relations with the Russian side and his enjoyment as a reliable communication channel that has proven effective in the past during the settlement of the Syrian crisis, amid a climate of US optimism about the possibility of reaching the desired agreement.

This reflects, many observers say, “the Trump administration’s tendency to direct diplomacy through personal representatives, seeking to build trust and bypass bureaucracy rather than relying entirely on the official diplomatic apparatus,” as well as its direct relationship with President Trump, which “allows for the transmission of messages and assurances that may be faster and clearer than traditional diplomatic channels”.

There are also those who say that Witkoff and Kushner were in previous contact with Russian figures such as Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Foreign Investment Fund, whom Putin chose as his personal envoy for foreign investments, after the first direct dialogue in Riyadh between representatives of Russia and the United States earlier this year, which we noted in a previous report from Moscow.

Thus, in short, it can be said that the inclusion of Jared Kushner in the heat of the talks and the preparation of the peace plan between Russia and Ukraine, along with those who want from European countries, was nothing more than an attempt to speed up the pace of negotiations and exploit personal channels of communication to advance the peace process, which was looking for a quick breakthrough.

It also reflects the Trump administration’s tendency to direct diplomacy through personal representatives rather than relying entirely on the official diplomatic apparatus, to the point that it may leave Jared Kushner with the opportunity to prepare what has become called the “Trump Peace Plan,” which his son-in-law restored to its 28 points.

Since entering the White House, Trump has started his activity by selecting his aides and team members based on his family and personal relationships, and there are those who attribute the disclosure of Kushner’s participation in addressing the Ukrainian crisis to the success they attribute to his effective role during the normalization of relations between Israel and some countries in the Middle East and the achievement of the so-called “Abraham Accords” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, after the Prophet Abraham, the common ancestor of the monotheistic religions the three are aimed at enhancing economic and security cooperation, in addition to its role in preparing the final settlement on the Gaza Strip.

In addition to all this, it’s possible to stop at what is said about his role in the preparation of the initial US plan with 28 points, and the subsequent amendments to it, during the talks between the US delegation and the Ukrainian side in Geneva on November 23.

According to Axios report regarding the role of both Witkoff and Kushner in drafting the first version of the US peace plan, which stipulated that the United States would recognize Crimea and the Lugansk and Donetsk provinces as de facto Russian territory, while areas in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia province would be granted frozen status along the line of contact.

The aftermath of the Kremlin meeting Witkoff contributed to Witkoff’s keenness to refuse to meet with the Ukrainian president more than once, the most recent of which was before his last meeting with the Russian president in the Kremlin, accompanied by Jared Kushner, in revealing that the agreement reached with Russia appears to be a new formula for the relationship between Moscow and Washington reached by the US administration through secret contacts between its envoys, who were tasked with developing the peace plan in consultation with Russian officials, according to US sources.

This has come to the attention of the Europeans who stood behind Zelensky’s trip to Ankara with an alternative peace plan that he drafted in cooperation with them and tried to present to Witkoff.

There is indication that this wasn’t far from the knowledge of the US administration, which was behind Witkoff’s decision to cancel the scheduled meeting with the Ukrainian president, who in turn refused to discuss the leaked points of the US peace plan because of the points that Ukrainian and European sources said were “pro-Russian” and included “humiliating” concessions to Ukraine and European countries, with which they appear to be closer to “surrender” according to Western reports.

Perhaps all of this could explain the absence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and American Marco Rubio from the last meeting in the Kremlin between the delegations of the two countries, after they headed the Russian and US delegations in their first direct dialogue in the Saudi capital Riyadh earlier this year.

Many observers have also attributed them to being one of the reasons for the US president’s initiative to announce the postponement or cancellation of the Budapest summit last October.

This may explain the surprise visit to the United States by President Putin’s Personal Envoy for Investment and Cooperation with Foreign Countries Kirill Dmitriev, and the meetings and meetings he held there, the results of which quickly emerged in containing the “emergency crisis” that arose between the two countries in the wake of the Budapest summit.

Having lived through Putin’s years of rule since the early 2000s, we recall what he said in his historic speech at the European Security Conference in Munich in February 2007, when he declared his rejection of the unipolar world and the unilateralism of a particular country in the international decision, away from the legitimacy of the United Nations, noting that his country would be forced to work on building its armed force.

He began to try to rapproche and cooperate with European countries and their leaders, including former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the late French President Jacques Chirac, and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who were on opposite sides of some of the policies and orientations of US presidents.

Putin’s eagerness to meet with the press was evident following his participation in a forum at a major bank in the Russian capital under the slogan “Russia is calling you”, before receiving him and his comrade Kushner, who relinquished his previous position as an adviser to the president during the first years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The meeting of the US delegation was scheduled for 5 pm local time on Tuesday, December 2, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced.

This provided a good opportunity for the US delegation to tour Red Square and have lunch at a nearby restaurant, while Putin was making fiery remarks ahead of the start of his meeting with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, including saying that “if Europe suddenly wants to wage war on us and does so, a very quick situation could arise in which we will have no one to negotiate with”.

The Russian president noted that Europe is standing in the way of the Trump administration reaching a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, and stressed that Brussels is making proposals for a peace plan that isn’t acceptable to Russia.

Putin cited a number of European leaders and leaders, as well as Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó’s statement the day before, when he revealed that “Europe is already preparing for war with Russia,” noting that “the EU’s strategic documents stipulate achieving full combat readiness by 2029, making military conflict possible by 2030”.

Hence what Putin said about his country’s readiness for war, as of now, and he remained silent for a while until he resumed his speech by saying that in such a scenario, a quick situation may arise in which we will have no one to negotiate with, stressing that Russia has often recognized the danger of conflict with Europe, and has taken proactive measures to ensure its interests and security.

This is why we recall what Putin said on a similar occasion, and from his memories in the streets of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), that “the streets of Leningrad have often taught him that as soon as you realize that fighting is a necessary reality, you have to be the initiator”.

This is a hint that is unnecessary for any statement, and the Russian president’s keenness to assert that “Europe has adopted the idea of inflicting the defeat of Russia’s strategy”.

“Europe seems to still live captive to these illusions… Europe has no peace agenda (on Ukraine), they are on the side of the war,” he said.

On the other hand, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington that peace in Ukraine can only be achieved through US mediation, and that Trump is the only leader in the world who can help end this conflict, and that is what Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Moscow for.

A five-hour dialogue lasted for the Russian-US sides in the Kremlin, which began two hours and 40 minutes later than their announced date, and were limited to Putin and his foreign affairs aides Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, and on the US side, Witkoff and Kushner.

As for the outcome of the dialogue on various aspects of relations between the two sides, Ushakov described it as useful and constructive, although he didn’t mention any details about the three points on which disagreement still exists.

NBC News revealed that Russia won’t make concessions on these three points:

The first of these points is related to the Donbas region or regional issues, while the second is the restriction of the size of the Ukrainian armed forces to 600,000 troops, and the third is the recognition of Crimea by the United States and Europe of Crimea, which Russia declared in March 2014, and the Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts, along with the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, which Russia announced in September 2022 as Russian territory, based on the results of referendums that weren’t recognized by the United States and the European Union countries.

This is in addition to the disagreement over the position on Ukraine’s application for NATO membership, and Russia’s arguments about the need to stop NATO’s eastward expansion and abandon the inclusion of other countries in the alliance with written guarantees as a prerequisite in the Ukraine peace plan.

The US administration agreed to this in the first version, but European countries and Ukraine were able to add new language that doesn’t confirm Russia’s demands in this regard.

In his remarks on the outcome of the “five-hour talks”, Ushakov said that the details of the terms of the plan weren’t discussed, but rather the content of these items, which he said consisted of 27 items, was discussed.

Sources said that the Russian side rejects the amendments proposed by European countries to the first version of Trump’s plan, and believes it is necessary to preserve the spirit and text of the previous Russian-US understandings.

Ushakov added that the two sides discussed issues of cooperation in various fields, revealing that the two sides agreed not to disclose their findings on the “peace plan”.

He said that the Russian side criticized the disadvantages of this plan and expressed its hope that it would reach a settlement.

After the meeting, Witkoff and Kushner headed to the US embassy in Moscow, where they spent about an hour, apparently enough to quickly brief Trump on their findings in their dialogue with the Russian side.

Then Witkoff and Kushner left the Russian capital late at night, going directly to Washington, not Kyiv as the Ukrainian side wanted.