Where US-Russia Talks Leave Ukraine

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1:02Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. On Monday, President Trump's special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, headed to Moscow. He's expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to present the latest proposal for a ceasefire and peace plan between Russia and Ukraine. The plan is amended from an initial 28-point plan the U.S. and Russia developed. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the new plan looks better. What we do know is that the U.S. has been trying to run different scenarios past each side. Nick Wadhams leads Bloomberg's national security coverage from Washington, D.C.

1:43There are still so many unknowns and so many questions about whether Ukraine's apparent support for the latest agreement is just a negotiating strategy, trying to put the ball back in Ukraine's court. At this point, we really actually have no good sense of whether we are any closer to a deal than we were about two weeks ago. Monday unfolded like a split screen. As Whitcoff journeyed to Russia, Zelensky was in France meeting with President Emmanuel Macron to rally European allies. The big question is going to be, you know, where does Trump land in this perpetual ping-ponging between having Zelensky's back and then shunning Zelensky, being more favorable to Vladimir Putin or getting tough on Vladimir Putin?

2:27And that leads to the biggest question. Will any of this flurry of activity bring about the end of the nearly four-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine?

2:42I'm David Gurra, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, the state of play between Russia and Ukraine, the developments of the last few days, and whether an end to the war could be in sight.

3:01Nick Wadhams has covered the relationships between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine for Bloomberg for years, including during President Trump's first term before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He's seen firsthand how Ukraine or Russia has had the upper hand in different moments. I asked Nick to lay the groundwork for me as U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff travels to Moscow and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeals to European allies. Where do things stand? Who has more leverage right now? What we know right now is that at least on the battlefield, Russia has the upper hand. This is a situation that the longer it goes on, the more it plays to Russia's advantage, both in terms of manpower and military power and current trend lines.

3:47The Russians have been making slow and very costly progress against Ukrainian forces, but they have been making progress. Ukraine is increasingly in an untenable position in terms of the strikes that it's been enduring, the strain on its electricity grid, the size of its army and its ability to recruit new troops. Russia is just a bigger country with a bigger economy and a better ability to keep this going. Steve Witkoff's heading to Moscow with Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. What has the administration said about what they're hoping to accomplish in Moscow this week? So what we know is that we had that initial 28-point plan that was apparently worked out between the U.S.

4:28and Russia. Then that put the ball in Ukraine's court. So we've had successive meetings between Marco Rubio and Ukrainian officials, first in Geneva and then in the last few days in Florida, where they've been hashing out some of Ukraine's objections to the initial elements of that 28-point plan. And now, at least if you hear what the US and Ukraine are saying, they've gotten to a point where the US and Ukraine are in broad agreement about the current contours of the 19-point plan reduced from 28 points. Now, Steve Witkoff is taking that back to Moscow. I should say, though, that we really don't have any indication that the two sides are any closer to bridging what is essentially their fundamental difference, which is that Russia basically wants Ukraine to be a rump state.

5:19They want caps on the size of Ukraine's military. They want Ukraine to essentially declare neutrality. They want NATO membership to be completely off the books. They want to take land that they occupied as part of their invasion. And also they want Ukraine to see land that it still occupies. And Ukraine has said that is an absolute red line. There's no way it's going to be willing to do that. As a sovereign nation, it wants the ability to determine its own future. And it doesn't want to have to see land that Russia captured in its invasion. So we really don't have any indication that the two sides have been able to bridge those gaps.

5:53In fact, everything we have heard is that Ukraine is just saying, no, we're going to punt those thorny decisions to a later date. Nick, we learned through a phone call, the transcript of which Bloomberg published, that Steve Witkoff has been coaching his Russian counterpart on how to make his case to President Trump. What did we learn from it about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia as it stands today? It was an extraordinary transcript, not only for its level of detail, but for the attitudes that the Trump administration seems to be taking. I mean, normally when you would have a negotiation of this contour of the shape, the U.S.

6:30would not take such an accommodating stance toward an adversary. They would essentially say, OK, here are red lines. You know, if you're going to come at us with this particular negotiating demand, I'm just going to tell you right now that is absolutely not going to fly. You would have a much more standoffish attitude by the U.S. side because you are dealing essentially with an adversary and one that has been an adversary for many years. But what you see in those in that call is essentially Steve Whitcoff taking a much more accommodating stance toward Russia, essentially saying, as you say, you know, he's coaching the Russians on how to get onto Trump's good side.

7:06and should say, of course, that when President Trump was asked about this, he just said, listen, Steve is a great negotiator. And what he's doing in that call is not really any different from what I would expect him to do. And he's doing a fantastic job. And it does make me think of that hot mic moment you had with President Barack Obama, and the then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev some years ago, around 2012, where he essentially said, hey, just let me get through the election and then we can have a conversation. This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility. Part of it is it's pretty extraordinary to see how this administration takes this much friendlier attitude toward Russia, but part of it is also just the fact that the conversation has been put out there.

7:51So many of these conversations from administrations passed on both sides. We have no idea what they would have said. And you can be sure that this, you know, probably is not the first time and there would have been similar sort of approaches by envoys from both parties when dealing with Russia in the past. Aside from the parts of this plan that deal with territory, what are the main tenets of the peace plan that is being haggled over right now? You have Ukraine losing control potentially over this massive nuclear power plant in perpetuity. You have Ukraine potentially giving up the prospect of NATO membership and also a cap on the size of Ukraine's military.

8:32The original 28-point plan put that number at 600 ,000. I mean, just this extraordinary situation where you would have these countries essentially telling Ukraine in a pretty unprecedented way, you are not going to be allowed to make sovereign choices for yourself in the future. So NATO membership being a perfect example, it asks that Ukraine put in its constitution the commitment never to seek NATO membership. Of course, that could be changed later. But the really interesting part of this plan, too, is the sort of economic web that it seeks to spin, which would be not only the U.S.-Ukraine economic partnership, but a U.S.-Russian economic partnership that would be unlike anything we've ever seen, where there would essentially be U.S.

9:17involvement in Russia's oil sector, in tapping and extracting natural resources. So it seeks to appeal very much to Trump's businessman, art of the deal instincts. So that's something that sort of escaped a lot of notice. Much of it has been on the limits to Ukraine. But what we're also seeing is this sort of incentivized structure where the U.S. would really benefit from this peace deal and seek to develop a much deeper and broader economic partnership with Russia, which also would mean, by the way, of course, that you would have all the lifting of the sanctions against Russia, which would benefit Vladimir Putin enormously.

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11:15As U.S.-led negotiations have gained steam, Another development in Ukraine has picked up speed. There's been an ongoing investigation into an embezzlement scandal that's rocked President Zelensky's government. I wanted to unpack what Zelensky is attempting to do to rally European allies and what he's dealing with on the home front with editor Nick Wadams. Nick, as all of this has been playing out, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been trying to rally the support of European allies. He was in Paris on Monday meeting with Emmanuel Macron. What specifically is he hoping to get from them?

11:45What kind of support at this moment? One is military support. So what President Trump had done in recent months was say, listen, we're not going to give Ukraine weapons and material and ammunition the way that the Biden administration did. But what we will do is allow Europe to buy those weapons and then give them to Ukraine. So he really wants Europe to step up the purchases of weapons and ammunition, especially at this critical time for the Ukrainian military. The other thing he essentially really wants more than anything is for European countries, which they have done, to use their leverage with President Trump to try to pull him back from the Russian side.

12:28And basically what also what he really wants is for them to just slow down the process. You know, Trump wants this thing done as quickly as possible. He wants a deal. He wants that handshake and he wants to move on. But what you saw from the Europeans almost immediately once this 28-point plan came out is to say, OK, hold on. Let's take some time here. Let's think about this. Let's slow it down. Let's do the conversations. We'll meet in Geneva. Then we'll go for round two. Then maybe round three. Just to try to bring Trump back on side. Someone noticeably absent from those talks is Andre Yermak, President Zelensky's now former chief of staff, who has been by his side through the entirety of this war.

13:09He resigned after being swept up in this wider corruption investigation in Ukraine. Nick, how big a deal is it now that as Ukraine goes through this that he is not party to these talks? He's not active in the negotiation. It's a huge deal because Andrei Yermak has in a lot of ways been such an intermediary and a point person in the conversations with the United States. So they have to sort of reboot a lot of those relations. The other thing it's going to do is create this sort of sense of suspicion from the Trump administration. I mean, corruption has been endemic in Ukraine for a long time. I mean, when I was covering the first Trump administration, we were doing a bunch of trips to Ukraine well before the invasion.

13:49And corruption was always a conversation. How are we going to deal with this? How are we going to root it out? What do we do? What are the incentives? What are the carrots? What are the sticks? It's something they just have not been able to solve. Trump has really pounced on this, and it gives you a sense of his thinking. When there's this corruption scandal in Ukraine, Trump sees that as a weakness that can be exploited to pressure Ukraine into doing something he wants it to do. In other words, to say, listen, your position is extremely untenable. You have this corruption problem. You have to agree to a deal with Russia now, even if it's on terms you don't like.

14:25And so that really gives you a sense of how he's playing this. He sees this as a serious problem for Ukraine that can be exploited. So it comes at just such a bad time for President Zelensky. That 28-point peace plan gives us a window into what Russia thinks it would take to end this conflict. How about for the Ukrainians? What would it take for them to declare this over? I mean, I think what they want is their freedom back. They don't want to have limits on the size of their military. They want Russia obviously out of the territory that it invaded both in the last couple of years, but also in the invasion in 2014.

15:08They would love to get Crimea back. I think what you would see them potentially settle for, and this is something that is very, very hotly debated, is there would be some willingness to concede some territory, if not by law, then de facto. So not a formal recognition that Russia has that land. But, you know, there are examples of this all around the world where you see these conflicts, whether it's between Greece and Turkey or North and South Korea or elsewhere, where you have this land that both sides claim but is left in a legal limbo. There is some indication we're seeing that Ukraine would be willing to agree, at least in the short term, to a situation where the land was de facto Russian but left legally ambiguous.

15:54us. I'll ask you lastly, as this royal negotiation takes place, what's your sense of how much longer Ukraine can hold out if it decides this peace deal as drafted is a non-starter, given the predicament that it's in, given Russia's ability to prosecute this war and its seeming willingness to continue doing that? What we know from Volodymyr Zelensky's own comments on this is that it's going to be a very, very difficult winter, that Ukraine can get through the winter, but looking into next year is going to be really, really difficult. And there is this theory of the case. Again, you can talk to 100 analysts and former military officials and Ukrainian officials and American officials and Russian officials and get 100 different predictions about what's going to happen next.

16:46But one theory out there is that things happen very, very slowly, and then they happen very, very quickly. So you have these very incremental, tiny changes, where Russia slowly takes little bites out of Ukrainian territory, and then something really big happens, and they take a whole bunch of land all at once. That's why you see Ukraine trying to do this thing now of essentially some of the conversations out of Europe is we need to make Ukraine like a porcupine, or we need to make it indigestible. So we just want to create the conditions so that Russia can't swallow it up or at least swallow up a significant chunk of territory in the east.

17:25That is really one of the big concerns. I think you would see Europe try to push and step up its purchases of materiel and you will start to see over the next year or two even more defense weaponry production going online. But the question is how do you bridge the gap between getting through this winter and when that weapon reproduction can get online so that Europe can flood the weapons and material to Ukraine. Nick, thank you very much. My pleasure.

17:58This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurra. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg.com, subscribe today at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. If you liked this episode, make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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