Leaked Call Reveals Trump Envoy Coaching Putin Aide on Ukraine Peace Pitch
A leaked phone call published by Bloomberg shows U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff advising a top Kremlin official on how Russian President Vladimir Putin should lobby Trump over a controversial peace plan for Ukraine.
The Gaze reports this, referring to Bloomberg and a post by Mariia Ulianovska, a Ukrainian journalist based in Washington.
According to the transcript of a five-minute call on October 14 between Witkoff and Putin’s senior foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov, Witkoff urges Moscow to stage a congratulatory call to Trump after the Gaza ceasefire deal, praise him as a “man of peace” and then pivot to a 20-point Ukraine framework modelled on the recent Gaza agreement.
For his part, Ushakov opens the call by congratulating Witkoff on his work “in the region” and then asks whether it would be useful for the “bosses” – Putin and Trump – to speak directly. Witkoff replies that Trump would be ready to take such a call as soon as Moscow proposes it, and then lays out in detail how the Kremlin should frame the outreach.
Trump Envoy tells Ushakov he believes “Russia has always wanted a peace agreement” and suggests that once compromise is reached “we will have a peace deal,” according to the transcript reviewed by Bloomberg.
Behind closed doors, Witkoff goes further. In a passage that has already sparked outrage in Kyiv and among some U.S. lawmakers, he says that, speaking “between us,” he knows what it would take to clinch a deal: Russia getting Donetsk and “maybe a land swap somewhere” – language that aligns with long-standing Kremlin demands for Ukrainian territorial concessions.
Witkoff also predicts that Trump will give him “a lot of space and freedom” to pursue the agreement, presenting himself to the Russian official as a central broker between the two leaders.
The conversation took place the day after Trump became the first U.S. president since 2008 to address Israel’s parliament and as Washington was touting its role in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters after the leak became public, Trump dismissed concerns about the call, saying he had not yet listened to the recording but describing the content as routine diplomacy.
The White House has defended Witkoff’s back-channel engagement as part of a broader push to end the war, even as critics in Congress accuse the envoy of leaning toward Russian positions and undermining Ukraine’s bargaining power. Republican Representative Don Bacon, among others, has warned that any deal built on Ukrainian territorial concessions would embolden Moscow and weaken U.S. credibility.
The Bloomberg transcript now adds a new layer of controversy: it suggests that even as Washington publicly presents itself as an honest broker, one of Trump’s closest envoys was privately reassuring a senior Kremlin aide that Russia’s core demands on territory are understood – and could, in his view, form the basis of a deal.
As The Gaze reported earlier, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll met with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi on Monday as part of an accelerating diplomatic push aimed at advancing the Trump administration’s proposed Ukraine peace framework.
Read more on The Gaze: What Could Security Guarantees for Ukraine Look Like?