Kushner And Witkoff Just Wrapped Two Days Of Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks—What Comes Next?

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1:03Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is Benjamin Friedman. He's the policy director at Defense Priorities. Benjamin, thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me on. The United States just wrapped up mediating two days' worth of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi. And these were the first direct peace talks that the warring countries have participated in in close to nine months. This is how the United States' special envoy, Jared Kushner, described the talks. Here are some of the words that he used. Tough, substantive, thorough, and a good first step.

1:39When you hear that and you hear the news that came out of these talks, what are some of your takeaways from what happened at the negotiating table? Well, I don't think that we're particularly close to getting a settlement between Russia and Ukraine. I think the Wyckoff-Kushner pairing has been quite ineffective, and it's actually unclear what their strategy is. How are they driving a deal? How are they getting Ukraine, which doesn't seem inclined to get a deal to do so? We're hearing talk about security guarantees of some kind for Ukraine, again, which comes up periodically. I don't think it's really possible for the United States or NATO to make meaningful, credible security guarantees to Ukraine after all we've seen in the war and our non-participation in it in a direct way.

2:31We've shown that we're not going to fight a war for them, basically. So it's hard to see how guaranteeing their security would actually make sense. But more broadly, I think that the two sides just aren't really close to a place where they can make a deal. know, hopefully I'm wrong and, you know, we'll see progress. When I heard Kushner in that press conference say this is a good first step, I was thinking, I mean, this war has been going on now for close to five years. It began in February 2022. So what do you think they're trying to accomplish? Because Kushner said some places we found areas of compromise, other places they're going to need a little bit more talking, a lot more conversations to get to a place that there could be a compromise.

3:15What do you think really was accomplished? I don't think much. I mean, it is something of an accomplishment to have talks to have the two sides in a room together, engaging. And I think you get information that way. I mean, a lot of times people will say, well, the Russians are totally unreasonable. You know, you negotiating with them is pointless. You know, they're just they want all of Ukraine. They want to do something that's totally unacceptable. But until you talk to them, you don't really know. So I'm not sure exactly what they're saying but i do think um that there's a possibility of a deal uh that's been sort of available for some time which is something like uh ukrainian neutrality and uh the territorial status quo now you know whether the russians would agree to that in the past they pushed for all of donbass essentially but i think something like that is a deal that might ultimately work.

4:10But if the Ukrainians are not willing to basically do neutrality, which is, you know, not any real security guarantees, not being in NATO and so forth, I think it's not going to go anywhere. I want to talk about one of the big headlines to come out of this meeting, and it was that they, both sides, Russia and Ukraine, agreed to a large-scale prisoner exchange. And Jared Kushner, he did say that this would be the largest humanitarian release of prisoners since the war began back in 2022. What do you make of that? Does that move the needle here in this conflict at all? I mean, I think it moves the needle minutely.

4:47You know, I mean, they've done these exchanges before. As you said, this is bigger, I guess. So that's good. You know, it shows a degree of cooperation. But, you know, wars, you know, that go on for a while, you tend to have these sort of tactical agreements, you know, cooperation that doesn't really settle the broad issues of the conflict. So it's probably, you could see it being helpful if it leads to more, if it leads to further talks, if, you know, they expand it to other areas like energy as they tried to do in the past. But at the moment, you know, Ukraine doesn't seem willing to do a sort of an energy deal like that because they feel like they're being effective at hitting these Russian oil refinery targets and so forth.

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6:36I want to talk about what's potentially next because both Kushner as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Europe needs to be at the table when these negotiations are occurring. And Kushner said he and Special Envoy Wyckoff, they are going first to Moscow to meet and debrief with Vladimir Putin. And there they want to get what they described as the blessing for European leaders to come to the table. What do you make of that, that wording there that they need Putin's blessing for that to occur, as well as the need for Europe to be part of these talks? Yeah, it's a little odd. I mean, obviously, you know, Russia has the option to not show up if they're so displeased that Europeans or something are there.

7:21So in a sense, you always kind of need their blessing for it to go forward. But this sort of particular, you know, trip to talk to Putin about it's a little odd. You know, more broadly, I think the, you know, the problem with Europe is that they're not unified. And I don't say that with anger towards them. But, you know, there's it's a lot of countries we're talking about. It's not a unified political entity despite the existence of the EU. And, you know, they don't agree about how to handle Russia and Ukraine. So beyond that, I think a lot of them have views, a lot of European leaders have views on Ukraine that are basically incompatible with peace.

8:03Like they'll say, okay, you know, we want there to be the war to end, but then they want to put conditions on it that are essentially so unrealistic, you know, in terms of, It's basically Russia has to give up a lot, which they're never going to do under current circumstances, to have a deal that will satisfy European leadership. So a lot of them don't really seem to want a peace deal. They're just sort of going through the motions. So I think I understand the desire to include Europe in any kind of settlement talks, but it's difficult because they're not unified and a lot of the leaders are not really for peace.

8:36it sounds like that for the past couple of years and now with europe in the mix there's a lot of non-starters that each side has ukraine has them with territory russia certainly has them as well as these european leaders where do you think negotiations and talks go from there because if something's a complete non-starter how do you reach compromise well i mean i think that's one of the reasons why, as much as you might want to include Europeans, you know, it might be necessary to leave them out if they're going to sort of just be a block on talks and you want to achieve something. But, you know, this is what negotiation and compromise is.

9:18I mean, if the two sides have incompatible red lines, which I think has basically been the case up until now and may still be the case, then you're not going to get a deal. So, you know, diplomacy is the art of trying to work around that. It would be nice if we had real diplomats involved. We don't. But as I said, I think, you know, I still think that there's a deal that involves something like the territorial status quo and, you know, pretty ironclad neutrality for Ukraine. I think that that doesn't preclude them joining the EU. It just means that they can't join NATO and there's going to be probably some limitations on what sort of, military forces they have.

9:57From what you're saying, it sounds like you don't really believe that Kushner and Wyckoff have the most effective strategies when it comes to diplomacy. What would you like them to do right now? What would be your advice for diplomacy and to reach this deal, the best deal, as fast as possible? Well, I don't want to say that I have a silver bullet here, but I think that the Trump administration with uh whitkoff and kushner in the lead have kind of i think uh blown about with taking different approaches you know recently they're taking uh you know for the not for the first time they're sort of taking this approach of you we want to sort of cozy up to russia um in order to make them more amenable to a deal so they're talking about all these commercial deals you know we did this diesel deal with russia which really had to do with gas prices but you know, was justified on the basis that it had something to do with peace with Ukraine, I think.

10:55And I think that doesn't make sense. You know, it's really just sort of trying to do things commercially, having people maybe they know make money and it's not deeply connected to peace so that, you know, but that's just one approach. In the past, you know, they've been very tough on Ukraine, trying to, the Trump administration more broadly, trying to undercut their confidence in future of American aid. And the Trump administration got lots and lots of criticism for that. But it was at least a strategy. So if you say to Ukraine, look, we're not going to help you to the extent we have forever, and in terms of intelligence and other things.

11:35So you need to figure out a way to deal with Russia without all our help. I think that would be conducive to driving them to the table. But you have to be willing to own that politically. The Trump administration hasn't. As soon as they get criticized, you're undercutting Ukraine, you're helping Russia. As much as the president talks tough, he has tended to fold. They haven't really followed through in that approach. So they haven't been tough on Ukraine really. As much criticism as they get for being tough on Ukraine, I don't think they've really done it. So one option is to really do it, to say, we're going to withhold stuff from you.

12:10And we're doing this very explicitly to get you to cut a deal with Russia. We're going to be clear about that and we're going to be willing to be criticized heavily for it politically. But I don't see that happening because they haven't shown willingness to do that to this point. Next up, Wyckoff and Kushner said that they are going to Moscow first to meet directly with Putin. Then they're flying to Dublin and there they are going to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What specifically are you looking out for those individual debriefs and how close do you think we are to peace? If you had to put a timeline on it.

12:47Yeah, you know, I think that too much attention gets paid to the sort of immediate results or non-results of these meetings and, you know, sort of Putin's happy, they're arguing with Zelensky. And I don't think these optics are irrelevant, but to me what's much more important is sort of are we pursuing a general strategy in terms of U.S. diplomacy that seems likely to end the war? Are we getting somewhere? And can we see that in all sorts of ways, not just in meetings, that we have a plan and that the two sides are getting close together? And I just see very little indication of that. So regardless of what happens in the meetings, I'm very skeptical that we're anywhere close to a deal.

13:33I think the two sides are not suffering enough to capitulate to the other's demands. And so the war, in a sense, isn't really progressing towards a settlement. And even if the United States had the best diplomats in the world, which we very much do not, I'm not sure we could drive the two sides together. But I just I think there's not a lot of room for optimism at this moment that the war is close to ending. Ben Friedman, I appreciate you breaking down the moment we're in right now. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks.

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