Leaked phone call shows Trump’s special envoy coached Kremlin on Trump tactics

Washington/London: A US presidential envoy coached a Kremlin official on how Vladimir Putin should talk to Donald Trump about the Ukraine war, and suggested the two leaders speak before a critical White House visit by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, a leaked phone call recording has revealed.

The extraordinary details were published by Bloomberg News as the envoy who was on the call – Steve Witkoff – prepares to meet Putin in Moscow next week on Trump’s direction, as part of the latest US-led effort to reach a peace deal in the conflict.

The recording of the call, which Bloomberg reviewed and transcribed, shows that Witkoff advised Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, to get the Russian leader to congratulate Trump on his Gaza peace plan and make a similar pitch regarding the Ukraine war.

“Zelensky is coming to the White House on Friday … I think if possible we have the call with your boss before that Friday meeting,” Witkoff told Ushakov in the call on October 14.

The Trump-Putin conversation then took place, and the two men had a “very productive” discussion, after which Trump cooled on the idea of selling Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.

According to the Bloomberg transcript, Witkoff also told Putin’s aide: “Me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere.”

• Scroll to the bottom to read the full transcript of Witkoff’s phone call

Nebraska congressman Don Bacon, a Republican who has been critical of Trump’s approach to Ukraine, said the transcript showed Witkoff “cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations”.

“Would a Russian-paid agent do less than he? He should be fired,” Bacon said on social media.

But Trump defended Witkoff over the call. “He’s got to sell this to Ukraine, he’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia – that’s what a dealmaker does,” he said. “I would imagine he’s saying the same thing to Ukraine.”

Amid the revelations, Trump dispatched Witkoff to Moscow to meet Putin as the next step in peace negotiations, after European and American leaders hailed their progress on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) in settling disputes over the terms of the latest proposal, floated by the White House last week.

Trump, however, is resisting a potential visit from Zelensky to the United States. That meeting could have happened as early as this week, after the Ukrainian leader aired the idea to discuss “sensitive points” in the potential deal.

“He [Zelensky] would like to come, but I think we should get a deal done first,” Trump said on board Air Force One as he left Washington on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago.

“We’re having some talks with Russia. Ukraine is doing well, I think they’re pretty happy about it. We won’t know for a little while, but we’re making progress.”

Trump said there were only a few remaining areas of disagreement with Ukraine and other nations after days of talks about the peace proposal, which began as a 28-point plan that was quickly dismissed by critics as too favourable to Russia.

“That was just a map. That was not a plan. It was a concept,” Trump said of the initial document.

Asked what concessions were now being asked of Russia, he said: “Their big concession is they stop fighting, and they don’t take any more land.”

Earlier, Trump announced that while Witkoff meets Putin in Moscow, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll would meet the Ukrainians. He said he wanted to meet Zelensky and Putin himself “only when the deal to end this war is final or in its final stages”.

The negotiations have included talks in Geneva on Sunday between US and Ukrainian officials, along with European counterparts, followed by a meeting in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday between Russian officials and Driscoll.

In the days since Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev hammered out the proposed 28-point plan, Ukrainian and European officials have hurried to draft a counteroffer with far less favourable terms for Russia.

The result is a winnowed-down 19-point proposal that pushes back on key elements of the US proposal, including the rapid removal of economic sanctions on Russia and a cap on the size of the Ukrainian military.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron convened an online meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Tuesday in Europe (Wednesday morning AEDT) and asked Zelensky to address the leaders.

‘A good result from Geneva’

Zelensky aired the idea of a meeting with Trump and said he believed European leaders should also attend, while he warned that Russia continued to bombard Ukraine amid the discussions about peace.

“Now we have a good result from Geneva,” he said of the negotiations. “That framework is on the table, and we are ready to move forward together with the United States of America, with the personal engagement of President Trump, and with Europe, and with leaders.

“And I’m ready to meet with President Trump. There are sensitive points to discuss; we have them still, and we think the presence of European leaders could be helpful.”

The coalition meeting included leaders from Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union and NATO. Australia was represented at the meeting by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

One of Ukraine’s key negotiators, Rustem Umerov, praised the work in Geneva and signalled support for the revised proposals without being specific about the terms.

“We appreciate the productive and constructive meetings held in Geneva between the Ukrainian and US delegations, as well as President Trump’s steadfast efforts to end the war,” he said.

“Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.

But there was no sign of Russian agreement, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it clear that Moscow preferred the original US plan over the revised European offer.

“Our assessments remain valid in the sense that the key provisions of Trump’s [original] plan are based on understandings reached in Anchorage at the Russian-American summit in August this year. And these principles are generally reflected in the plan, which we welcomed,” Lavrov said.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv exchanged fire overnight, with heavy air raids on Kyiv and assaults on southern Russian areas that left at least six people dead in the Ukrainian capital and three dead in Russia’s Rostov region, officials say.

Ukraine’s air defences worked to shield the capital from combined missile and drone attacks, and loud explosions were heard, with authorities instructing residents to stay in shelters.

Separately, Romania scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday morning to monitor what it said were two intrusions into its airspace by drones in the east and south-east near the border with Ukraine, according to the Defence Ministry.

Following the overnight strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called for continued pressure on Russia as well as unity among transatlantic allies to end the war. The latest attack was a “terrorist response to the United States’ and President Trump’s peace proposals”, he said on the X platform.

With Reuters, Bloomberg, AP

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