Leaked recordings prove Putin is making Trump his puppet

The Witkoff tape reveals how much the game has changed - US diplomacy now appears to centre around flattering and stroking the ego of Donald Trump

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In normal times, we the public are left to wonder what presidents and their envoys say to one another behind closed doors, when they’re negotiating deals on which our future safety and prosperity depend – for understandable reasons, this kind of statecraft is kept as secret as it is possible to be.

But, of course, we are not living in normal times. Our latest reminder of that is the publication by Bloomberg of the full telephone transcript between Donald Trump’s special envoy for peace, his billionaire pal Steve Witkoff, and Vladimir Putin’s top aide on foreign policy, Yuri Ushakov.

If nothing else, it’s fascinating to see how much these ultra-rich and ultra-powerful men flannel one another even in private. As the call – which took place on 14 October, shortly after Israel and Hamas agreed a US-brokered ceasefire – opened, Ushakov fell over himself to praise Witkoff for his role in that deal.

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Witkoff, in turn, gave Ushakov extensive advice on how he should make sure to flatter and praise Trump over the deal, and how he could leverage that flattery – and Trump’s ensuing good mood – to try to net a favourable deal for peace between Russia and Ukraine.

“Just reiterate that you congratulate the President on this achievement, that you supported it, you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen,” Witkoff said, per Bloomberg’s translation of the call. “So I would say that. I think from that it’s going to be a really good call.”

Special envoy Steve Witkoff walks ahead of Putin’s top investment official Kirill Dmitriev and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov during negotiations in Moscow in April (Photo: Kremlin Press Office/Anadolu via Getty)

As the call continues, Witkoff suggests the two men work together on a 20-point peace proposal “just like we did in Gaza”, which could become a “Trump plan”. Just weeks later, the US and Russia supposedly agreed a 28-point plan for peace that in reality read almost word for word like a list of Russian demands, with virtually no concessions towards Ukraine and its red lines.

The transcript makes for extremely difficult reading. At a surface level, it looks almost like treason – it seems as if a top aide for the US government is helping one of America’s most prominent adversaries, and being chummy to the point of oleaginousness as he does so.

The reality of negotiation is more complex. “Good cop, bad cop” – the tactic used by police to try to make suspects confess – is one of the best-known and oldest negotiating strategies in the book, and few would suggest the good cop is being disloyal when he’s nice to the suspect. In more normal times, when people had confidence in the ability and loyalty of those at the top of US government, it might be possible to shrug off Witkoff’s tactics. If it gets results for America, then maybe it’s fine.

Putin and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov at the Kremlin this month (Photo: Ramil Sitdikov/Reuters)

But, the very fact that we are able to read that transcript, that we know what was said on the call, shows that it worried someone – perhaps a whistleblower within the US government, or perhaps a usually friendly intelligence agency who intercepted the call. Someone well-placed thought it was important enough to be out there, and that the world should see it.

That might just be a rational response to the erratic nature of the Trump administration, which has been accused of going around the world doing deals that also net millions or billions for the business interests of the President or his inner circle. It is a response to the alarm bells raised at the apparent willingness of the US to endorse a peace deal that looked as if it was authored by Russia – even if it seems to have rowed back on that support since.

But, more than any of that, the Witkoff tape reveals how much US diplomacy seems to centre around flattering and stroking the ego of Trump. Diplomacy is usually a matter of knowing your own country’s strategic interests and red lines, and trying to advance those goals.

A protest against a plan drafted by the US and Russians in front of the US Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic on Tuesday (Photo: Eva Korinkova/Reuters)

The Witkoff recording revealed the game has changed. Out are America’s long-term interests, let alone any consideration for the security of Ukraine or even Europe as a whole. Instead, Witkoff seems laser-focused on delivering a deal, any deal, because that’s what Trump wants.

More than that, he seems to know that how Trump will regard any proposal depends more on his mood at the time – and his disposition towards whoever he’s talking to – than its contents. Witkoff is telling his counterpart Ushakov how to do something he is surely very familiar with: he is telling him how to manage someone ruling like an autocrat.

That, more than any concerns over Witkoff’s personal loyalties, is what’s alarming about this extraordinary leaked call. It is not how a democracy negotiates: it’s how you handle a world in which the world’s greatest superpower is run in the interests of the man who leads it.