A senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday that Russia will not make major concessions on the peace plan in Ukraine, after a leaked recording of a call by US envoy Steve Witkoff showed that he advised Moscow on how to present itself to Donald Trump.
Witkopf is expected to travel to Moscow next week with other senior US officials to talk with Russian leaders about a possible plan to end Ukraine’s nearly four-year-old war, the bloodiest in Europe since World War II.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that he was ready to move forward with the framework supported by the United States to end the war and to discuss controversial points with the US President in the talks, which he said should include European allies.
Kiev and its European allies are concerned that details of the plan leaked last week appear to yield to key Russian demands, such as preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, establishing Russian control over a fifth of Ukraine, and limiting the size of the Ukrainian army.
Trump later said progress had been made and Moscow was making concessions, even though the war — in which Russian forces were advancing — was moving “in only one direction.”
But while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov welcomed the Trump administration’s efforts, he told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday: “There can be no question of concessions or any surrender in our approach to these key points.”
The transcript of the Witkoff-Ushakov call was leaked
Moscow also raised concerns about the leak to Bloomberg News of a transcript of a phone call between Witkov and Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, in which the US envoy advised Ushakov on how to present a peace plan to Trump.
Aboard Air Force One, Trump ignored a reporter’s question about why Witkoff was training Russian officials, saying it was simply “what a negotiator does” and “a very common form of negotiation.”
But Russia said the leak was an unacceptable attempt to undermine peace efforts and that it was a hybrid war.
Ushakov claimed to have used WhatsApp to talk to Witkov on several occasions, and the Russian newspaper Kommersant, which interviewed Ushakov, ran a story with the headline: “Who set up Steve Witkov?”
Bloomberg reported that it had reviewed a recording of the call. It was not clear how Bloomberg obtained the recording of the conversation. A spokesperson told Bloomberg News: “We stand by our reporting.”