“Russian representative Kyrylo Dmitriev during negotiations with the US on ending the war against Ukraine convinced the special envoy of the President of the United States Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner of the benefits of potential bilateral cooperation.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Kyrylo Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff, photo AFP via Getty Images Source: “European truth” with reference to the publication of The Wall Street Journal
Details: According to information gathered by the publication from a wide range of sources, the discussion between American and Russian negotiators during their meetings, including the last one in Miami in October, went far beyond the Russian-Ukrainian war.
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Among other things, they allegedly talked about how to “raise” the Russian economy after the cessation of hostilities, with priority for American companies over European ones.
The publication repeats – as already speculated in the media – that the first draft of the 28-point “peace plan” was largely formed by Dmitriev.
At the meeting, Dmitriev allegedly promoted the idea that American companies should use $300 billion of Russian assets frozen in Europe for “American-Russian investment projects and the US-led reconstruction of Ukraine.”
In addition, he allegedly proposed that American and Russian businesses jointly explore deposits of valuable minerals in the Arctic and said that thanks to cooperation, the United States and Russia would receive “unlimited prospects.” There were even ideas about a joint mission to Mars thanks to SpaceX.
According to unnamed sources from among the security officials of the West, for the Kremlin, these talks in Miami were apparently the “culmination” of the application of the strategy prepared before Trump’s second term. Its goal was to “bypass” the traditional US national security apparatus and convince Trump to view Russia not as a rival and a military threat, but as a “country of generous opportunities.”
This approach appears to have “worked” for Witkoff and Kushner, who are businessmen and share Trump’s views “that borders are less important than business,” the publication said.
Witkoff himself, in a conversation with the WSJ, directly said that “Russia has huge resources and huge territories” and spoke with hope about a potential future partnership between the USA, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
“If we do all this, everyone will prosper and will be involved in it (…), then this will naturally be a safeguard against new conflicts there,” the special envoy of Trump said.
In conversations with Witkoff and Kushner, Dmitriev directly said that Russia would like primarily American investment, not European, because European leaders “talked a lot of nonsense” about “peaceful efforts.”
“The question for history remains whether Putin used this approach in the interests of ending the war, or as a ploy to flirt with the United States, meanwhile prolonging the conflict – in which, from his point of view, he will slowly but inevitably win,” – note the authors of the publication.
As some interlocutors of the publication say, the fact that recently some sanctioned oligarchs, including Gennady Tymchenko, Yuriy Kovalchuk and the Rottenberg brothers, allegedly secretly sent negotiators to American businesses to talk about potential cooperation in the mining of rare earth metals and in the energy sector, can be evidence in favor of the assumption that the Kremlin is ready to negotiate an end to the war. It allegedly included the launch of “Nordic Streams”.
It is also known that Exxon Mobil (before Trump’s sanctions) met with representatives of Rosneft and was interested in resuming cooperation in gas production on Sakhalin, if they agreed to it at the political level.
However, the article emphasizes, there is no evidence that Witkoff, the White House, or Kushner knew about or were in any way involved in the said interactions.
The interlocutors of the publication said that before the meeting between Putin and Trump in Alaska in August, the European intelligence community gave top officials of some European countries a report on what economic plans Trump’s representatives are discussing with Russia – in particular, about joint mining of minerals in the Arctic, and they were shocked by it.
What preceded: Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an article reconstructing the events of how the 28-point “peace plan” to end the Russian-Ukrainian war emerged.
Last weekend, the US and Ukrainian delegations held talks in Geneva regarding the initial draft of the “peace plan” and began to make adjustments to it.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian delegation led by Rustem Umyerov flew to the USA for new negotiations. The Bloomberg agency previously reported that the Ukrainian delegation will be in Florida, where it will hold meetings with the special envoy of the US president, Steve Witkoff, and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
More on this topic in the article: Peace on the terms of Europe. How the US changes the armistice agreement and what becomes the main problem.