President Trump is defending his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, over the way he has conducted negotiations during the latest American push to end the war in Ukraine and will send him back to Russia to meet again with President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Trump’s comments came Tuesday evening after Bloomberg published what it said was a transcript of a phone conversation on Oct. 14 between Mr. Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy aide to Mr. Putin. In the reported conversation, Mr. Witkoff appeared to offer the Russian official advice on how the Kremlin could win backing from Mr. Trump for its preferred terms to end the conflict.
Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that Mr. Witkoff had been meeting with Russian and Ukrainian officials, and he cast the conversation as part of negotiations to end the conflict. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and then launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago.
“I haven’t heard it, but it’s a standard thing,” Mr. Trump said of the conversation. “That’s what a deal maker does.”
Mr. Trump said that the latest flurry of U.S.-led diplomacy was making “good progress,” but that securing a deal was proving harder than he expected. The president said he thought his relationship with Mr. Putin would have made achieving a peace deal easier, and that reaching an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders was a “complicated process.”
The White House has said that the peace plan was developed by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Mr. Witkoff, who met Russian officials several times before details of the plan emerged last week.
Mr. Trump last week set a deadline of Thursday for Ukraine to approve a U.S.-backed plan in his latest push to end the conflict, but he has suggested that the timeline is flexible if there are signs that the talks are making headway.
“We’ve settled eight wars,” claimed Mr. Trump, who is pursuing a Nobel Peace Prize and has repeatedly taken credit for ending a series of conflicts since taking office in January. “And I thought this would be one of the easier ones because of my relationship with President Putin. But this is probably one of the more difficult ones because there’s a lot of hatred.”
Mr. Trump did not say when Mr. Witkoff might return to Russia, but he said that Daniel P. Driscoll, the U.S. Army secretary, would meet with Ukrainian officials at the same time. Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on social media on Wednesday that Mr. Driscoll was expected in Kyiv later this week.
Russia’s state news agency, Tass, reported on Wednesday that Mr. Witkoff would visit Moscow next week. Mr. Ushakov told Russian state television on Wednesday that he would speak to Mr. Witkoff about the purported leak of the phone call, calling it “unacceptable.”
The warmth of Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin, cultivated during his first presidency and continued during his second term, has caused consternation to some in Washington and among the country’s allies, but Mr. Trump has argued that it gives him leverage in the Ukraine talks.
When details of an initial U.S.-backed peace plan emerged last week, diplomats were stunned, saying it acceded to many of the Kremlin’s demands. These included placing limits on the size of Ukraine’s military, a handover by Ukraine of parts of the Donbas region, and an acknowledgment by the government in Kyiv that it would not attempt to join NATO.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last week that the U.S.-backed proposal, and Mr. Trump’s deadline, would force his country to make a “difficult choice.”
Following talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Geneva over the weekend, and consultations between the White House and Ukraine’s allies in Europe, that 28-point plan has been modified. The initial proposal was “just a concept,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday, adding that security guarantees for Ukraine were being worked out with the country’s allies in Europe.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told journalists on Wednesday that it was premature to talk about striking a Ukraine peace deal in the near future.
Paul Sonne and Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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