US envoy advised Kremlin on how to pitch Ukraine plan to Trump: Report

WASHINGTON

US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff advised a senior Kremlin official on how Russian President Vladimir Putin could broach a potential Ukraine peace proposal with his counterpart Donald Trump during a phone call last month, according to a report Tuesday.

Bloomberg, citing a transcript of the Oct. 14 call, said Witkoff told Putin’s top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov that the Russian leader should congratulate Trump on the Gaza ceasefire agreement and suggest launching a similar 20-point peace plan for Ukraine.

“I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you,” Witkoff told Ushakov, according to the reported transcript.

He also proposed arranging a Trump-Putin call before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House visit that week. The Kremlin aide responded that Putin would praise Trump as “a real peace man.”

“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,” White House communications director Steven Cheung was quoted as saying in the report.

Asked about the report by reporters on Air Force One en route to Washington, DC from Florida, Trump described Witkoff’s approach as “a standard thing…that’s what a deal maker does.”

“You got to say, look, they want this. You've got to convince him of this. You know, that's a very standard form of negotiation,” he said.

“I would imagine he's saying the same thing to Ukraine, because each party has to give and take,” he added.

The report comes as Trump on Tuesday signaled the possibility of a high-level meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin if negotiations advance.

Trump said his team made “tremendous progress” over the past week on a US-drafted 28-point peace plan to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which he said has been “fine-tuned” with input from both sides, leaving “only a few remaining points of disagreement.”

Talks between US and Ukrainian officials in Geneva over the weekend produced an “updated and refined” framework, according to a joint statement by both countries.