Was Trump's latest 'peace plan' written by the Kremlin?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast Even from the last time I spoke to you, and I apologize for keeping you waiting, but there was more work to be done. Now, obviously, like any final agreement, they'll have to be agreed upon by the presidents. And there are a couple issues that we need to continue to work on. But I think the report today is that I think today was worthwhile. It was very, very... It is probably the most productive day we have had on this issue, maybe in the entirety of our engagement, but certainly in a very long time. That is the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, talking in Geneva after frantic negotiations on the Ukraine-Russia war.

0:42He says that the 28-point Trump peace plan that came out over the weekend is bringing the conflict closer to its end than it has ever been. But many people see it as a ridiculously one-sided document in favour of Russia. and a leading Republican senator has come out and said, why is America rewarding the aggressor and punishing the victim? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:15The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And there is a bit of a drama going on about this 28-point peace plan because some of what was released was in English and rather clunky English at that. And that led to various people to put it into kind of chat GPT and grok and whatever else. And what they both came up with was, well, this was a document that was written in Russian and translated into English, giving vent to the idea that somehow this is a Russian peace plan that the Americans are passing off as their own. Now, I've spoken to various people who say it's much more complicated than that, But frankly, if this was a Russian foreign ministry document, there wouldn't be flaws in the English.

2:01It would be absolutely perfect. They speak better English than us. Exactly. They're not clunky or clumsy in that way. But there is something very odd that has gone on in the drawing up of this peace plan, which seems to unbelievably favour Russia, where all the sacrifice is going to come from Ukraine and Russia gives very little in return. Look, the sort of context of this, obviously, in a way we've been talking about all year. We've been talking about it ever since that fateful explosion between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office back in February, going on for a year ago now. And ever since that time, Ukraine and the European powers have been trying to have changed tack.

2:41Instead of attacking anything that the Americans were doing or that Trump was doing, instead of just rejecting stuff out of hand, And even when it has clearly been unacceptable to the Ukrainians or to the Europeans, the strategy and tactic has been to engage with it. So, Mr. President, very, very interesting proposal. This is let's go away and think about it. Let's criticise it to try and manage Trump expectations and to try and keep him on side so that the arms and intelligence to a limited extent still continue to flow. It feels to me as if, maybe it's not this week, but certainly it's coming, that we are reaching the end of that game, that diplomatic game, because we're reaching something approaching a crunch point.

3:19And this document, this 28-page document, for all of its demerits and faults, appears to be that end point. And it's just worth dwelling for a second on what it says. So as I say, this came out over the weekend. It forms the basis of the negotiations which have been taking place in Geneva. And the idea is, within these 28 points, is that it forces an end to the war in Ukraine by freezing the conflict roughly along where the front lines are at the moment. It won't recognise Russian occupation and international law of those places, but it will freeze the border. It will take Ukraine's NATO membership off the table permanently.

3:59And in return, Ukraine would get some sort of formal sovereignty guarantees, perhaps backed up by the US, although it's unclear exactly what that would look like. It would be allowed to join the EU, which is potentially a significant concession. But there may also be limits on its army from where it is today to around 600 ,000. So given the territorial concessions which are being spoken about, given the taking off the table, the prohibition of joining NATO, which has obviously been a key Ukrainian ask, these are very, very tough pills for Kyiv to swallow. Yeah. And just to sort of, you know, so that Russia would be able not only to keep the areas that it has taken, but also would have control of the whole of the Donbass.

4:46And part of the reason that the Russian operation failed in 2022, aside from the chaos after the invasion, was that they just didn't have enough forces in position to take Kiev. the thinking is that if you have the donbass as well then you're within striking distance of kiev and it'll be a much easier operation so what you have is you have a ukrainian military that is halved in size you have russian troops in the donbass you have no international peacekeeping troops maintaining the sort of ceasefire line yeah you might remember the uh starmer idea of coalition of the willings of european troops to maintain the demarcation line this document that's gone that's nowhere that so so you haven't got any of those people there and there is some kind of vague article 5 idea the nato constitution which says that an attack on one is an attack on all and therefore if russia tried to attack again then the west nato would intervene and you think given where Donald Trump has been in his attitude towards Ukraine and the hostility he has shown and shown again this weekend towards Zelensky you know why can't they ever be grateful enough about all that we've done for them would you really trust your future to Donald Trump acting in good faith to be the one who would come to Ukraine's rescue if Putin struck again in two years time when he has rearmed when he's re-equipped and he feels absolutely confident to take kiev it doesn't leave a sovereign ukraine looking like a stable viable country on those terms and that is why you've got ukrainian politicians thinking oh my god this is terrible but what is the alternative and so as you say lewis i think the significant thing is that europe is engaging britain's national security advisor jonathan powell playing a key role in all of this, I'm told.

6:48And, you know, a lot of people in the West are kind of hoping that he can be the one that will persuade Washington that it needs to make this document a more balanced approach. But if it becomes more balanced, then presumably, if it becomes acceptable to Ukraine, then presumably Moscow walks away from it. We also sort of dwell on the, sort of the genesis of the document, right? Which is itself fascinating. Bizarre, yeah. And bizarre, because, you know, I say that Marco Rubio has been negotiating this in Geneva, which is true. I mean, he's definitely been negotiating suddenly this stage of it, this what might be an implementation stage.

7:21And bear in mind, I mean, Trump's resolved from this a little bit now. But, you know, at the end of last week, he was saying he wanted a deal signed, sealed, delivered by Thursday, by Thanksgiving. And, you know, he said it's probably going to push into next week at least. But nonetheless, you know, so this has been very much presented initially as a fait accompli. Trump then says it's not the final deal. Putin also says it's probably not the final deal. But nonetheless, these are the sort of outlines. And it seems that the outlines have not necessarily been negotiated between Marco Rubio and his opposite numbers.

7:48But instead, again, this kind of omnipresent figure of Steve Witkoff, who has been people who remember, you might remember, has been deeply involved in the Middle East and the Gaza process, but has been a sort of envoy for Trump in this process as well. negotiating in Miami with a Russian opposite number, drawing this document up again in very kind of opaque circumstances behind closed doors. I mean, these things are often behind closed doors, but normally they're at least done by the State Department or foreign offices or whatever. But this is being done in a very classically Trumpian way. Certainly no Ukrainians in the room and certainly no Europeans in the room either, despite the fact that the Ukrainians are expected to live with it.

8:28And to some extent, the Europeans are being expected to financially at least enforce Well, you say no Ukrainians. The Russian you're talking about is actually Ukrainian. Kirill Dmitriev is seen as the Antichrist in Kiev because he is someone who was a Ukrainian national, but who is now in effect the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund. 50 years old, educated in America, very sophisticated, very wealthy, dealing with Steve Wyckoff, who has no diplomatic experience whatsoever before becoming Donald Trump's right hand man for negotiations. Once Donald Trump started his second term, he's a property developer and he went to meetings at the Kremlin with kind of, you know, Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin with no translator, relying on the Kremlin translator.

9:18no note takers on his side no state department officials no state department officials and he went there with his very much younger girlfriend flew in on a private jet goes to this meeting at the kremlin and kind of says i think vladimir putin is a man of good faith and all the rest of it and so steve wickhoff has been negotiating with this guy kirill dimitriev now we've only seen some of the document and i was speaking to a senior foreign office uh source with a lot of experience on the Russia desk who was talking about how you know we know about what the ideas are of what Ukraine has got to surrender we don't know what the business deals are and and I think the European side want to know who's going to get the rare earth minerals what's the carve-up going to be of you know bits of land and what America stands to gain in terms of inward investment and all of those things are very very opaque at the moment and I think that this is where the Europe feels so blindsided by the idea that this is not only being cooked up by America and Russia, but it's being cooked up by Kirill Dmitriev, this kind of slightly odd figure who is sort of freelancing on behalf of the Kremlin, and Steve Witkoff, the property developer, billionaire, who is Trump's man on all of this.

10:36And this is obviously the thing that makes so many Ukrainians and Europeans nervous. And rightly so, because this is, you know, reminiscent of, and this has been one of the themes of this year, right? So great power politics. And this is what Putin has wanted from the very beginning, which is to, you know, as if this were a sort of modern day Versailles conference, sort of sit there as the great powers, the great power, the United States and Russia, itself very elevating to Russia, which in many ways is quite a weak state, and carve up Europe and create a new European security order as they see fit.

11:09and to do so without the Ukrainians in the room and without the Europeans in the room is obviously very, very uncomfortable. That said, you know, the Europeans have not, as I'm saying, rejected it almost. Certainly, Keir Starmer hasn't rejected it out of hand because they continue to play this delicate diplomatic dance of wanting to continue to curry Trump's favour as much as possible. So Starmer has come out and said, on his way to Johannesburg for the G20, said, you know, it's promising to see a proposal such as this. obviously some things still need some work. As you know, along with President Macron, I've been leading the Coalition of the Willing, which is a group of countries that have put in place support for Ukraine, particularly capability.

11:50And I'm now planning that we will meet virtually tomorrow. So we will host a Coalition of the Willing call to further discuss the progress that is being made and I hope can be made towards the thing that matters above all else, which is a just and lasting peace, which matters for Ukraine. But it also matters for all of us, because the conflict in Ukraine has had a direct impact here in the United Kingdom. So progress, yes, more work to do. But we've all got our sleeves rolled up, ready to put in those hard yards, hopefully, to get to the right outcome. So yeah, you can say that again, right? Because finding that and that's been the sort of principle throughout the course of the year, right?

12:31Or the problem throughout the course of the year trying to find the kind of landing zone between what is acceptable to putin and what zelensky can sell back home is really vanishingly thin and slender and actually i mean look there is a world what the americans would say and what even and you can sort of feel even people in europe who have obviously been sentimentally and politically determined to see ukrainian victory do acknowledge it obviously this is now about to enter its fourth year the war and Ukraine is whole continuing largely to hold its own but isn't winning the prospect of retaking through conquest the territory is lost at the very least is negligible to nil not least because of the Russians you know Putin literally throwing into the organ grinder just endless numbers of men and materiel and given the constraints that it has and given the fact that the Americans are no longer willing to supply the arms and money that they once did it is the time to come to some sort of accommodation.

13:32And in the meantime, after that, Europe can try and arm Ukraine to the teeth to make sure that the Russians never come back for more. But it's a hell of a gamble. And you can see why Zelensky and so many Ukrainians who have sacrificed so much blood and treasure would be reluctant to accept it. The accusation that comes from Washington of those who just want this over with and can't see why America should be helping Ukraine at all, saying, look, you just want the forever wars and arguments like this. Surely we're on the right side of history to be saying it needs to end and it needs to end now.

14:05Against that, you have other people who are saying, no, no, no, the strains are showing in Russia. Russia is getting$20 less per barrel of oil for its oil than it was getting a year ago. So income is much less. The Russian bank is having to sell gold to finance the economy. There are all sorts of areas of Russian economy where the stresses and strains of four years of sanctions are showing that cars are falling apart and you can't get parts for them or whatever it happens to be. And therefore, this is not the time to go weak. This is the time to apply more pressure onto Russia. And in that you have Donald Trump, who doesn't quite blow with the wind because that I think is wrong.

14:46I think what Trump has done with this document is gone back to where Trump always is, which is inexplicably pro Putin in a way that defies rational explanation. And that has been consistent from Donald Trump ever since the accusations came about the 2016 election that there was undue Russian influence in it. And that could have helped Trump win the election. he has always been sympathetic towards Putin what the West have been able to do at times like the sanctions on Russian oil that he recently announced they have made him do some stuff but you always got the sense from the Alaska meeting from everything else that his instinct his instinct is I'm broadly with Putin on all of this and I think the West still finds that unfathomable and impossible to explain.

15:41Well, yes. I mean, I think because we've spoken before on the show about, you know, Trump's motivations and some of them are sort of more exotic and perhaps intriguing. But one thing that I think that, you know, can be proven beyond doubt is simply that, you know, he has a view of the world, again, which goes back to great powers. The Monroe Doctrine. Yeah. Monroe Doctrine, but also, you know, Thucydides is, you know, the poor must suffer what they must, you know, as in Ukraine's weak. It's just how he sees the world. It's his vision. You know, it's a property developer view of the world. Ukraine's weak.

16:10If you're weak, you get eaten. Russia's stronger. I mean, he talks about this in explicit terms. It's a bigger country. It's got more money. It's got more soldiers. Therefore, you have to make a deal. Right. And the idea of sentiment, of more romantic and grounded ideas of sovereignty and of national self-determination and national liberation and freedom do not cut any mustard with him because he just thinks, well, those things are fine. But if you can't provide them for yourself, then you don't have them. And that is basically, I think, he can't understand why Zelensky has his own politics to deal with and, of course, his own sense of dignity and so on.

16:44And Zelensky spoke in explicitly those terms on Friday. You know, he said that he feels that Ukraine is being put in a position where it must choose between its dignity as a nation and the United States as an ally. And, of course, there's a third consideration which we've alluded to, which is this. It might be that Zelensky himself and others in Ukraine who, of course, so weary of this war, you know, people are still being killed every day. there were yet more civilian drone attacks overnight, right? No one needs to tell them about how costly this war is. But of course, there is also that impulse and imperative that what have they been fighting this war for?

17:18It can't be for nothing. They can't get to the end of it and still be in as a weak security position, indeed weaker in some ways, than it was at the beginning. What have all those Ukrainian soldiers died and suffered for? And in that regard, this document is still wanting. And the fear is, right, But this is a bit like Munich, right? It just becomes like Munich, i.e. the Czechs are told, you give up this territory, you give up the Sudetenland. And it was all fine. And it'll be fine. That'll be fine. Six months later, what does Hitler do? He marches into the rest of Czechoslovakia. And, you know, that is clearly the concern and worry about history repeating itself all over again.

17:55A history, of course, about which Trump is largely ignorant. And, you know, just to end on a kind of glib point, Donald Trump, I mean, this Thursday in the United States, everything comes to a halt because it's thanksgiving and donald trump wanted this deal to be done by thanksgiving just setting an artificial deadline like that to which the obvious rejoinder would be you would be a turkey voting for thanksgiving if you accepted this document well indeed i suppose look if you got a document which genuinely could build into it some sort of security guarantees if you could get an assurance from european powers that they would arm ukraine properly if you don't accept the annexation, but you accept it as a matter of current fact.

18:36And you also get accession to the EU. And the EU has a mutual self-defense pact, right? So that is a sort of quasi-defensive mechanism. Maybe there's a world, you could say, that given we're going into the fourth year, given what a toll it's taken, given the fact that the Americans are withdrawing their support, maybe that's something Zelensky could sell. The problem is, I mean, there's an interesting, like, sort of dynamic with all of this, right? which is that one of the reasons the Americans think that maybe now is the time is because Zelensky actually internally within Ukraine politically has never been weaker because of these corruption scandals, which, you know, failure, unfairly sort of circling around him.

19:10And obviously the public is weary. There's an interesting kind of like point there. Does that make a deal more likely or does it make it less likely? Because you could argue it makes it more likely because Zelensky is under so much pressure from without and within. But also in order to swallow a deal that clearly where Ukraine is not going to get everything it wants. In fact, it's not going to get perhaps most things that it wants. You would require an internal leader to be able to say with complete authority to Ukraine itself. This is the best we're going to get. And these are the reasons why we must accept it.

19:42But you need complete authority and legitimacy for that. Right. So there was some speculation at the weekend saying the absolute nightmare scenario would be if Zelensky were to accept the deal and then he were to be removed. Because, you know, internal politics within Ukraine, which has basically been in abeyance to some extent during the war, returns and they say Zelensky sold us out and then is replaced with who knows what. Then that's a nightmare scenario of complete internal political destabilisation within Ukraine. You know, we've spoken about the pressure on Zelensky. and of course where Donald Trump is right you know is to say look this is your backyard Europe if you want to do something about it you do it you know we had all the talk about the coalition of the willing earlier on this year which hasn't seemed to make that much progress you've still got countries in Europe buying Russian oil we've got this you know billions and billions of Russian money held in Belgian banks that has been confiscated but is not being used I mean it's kind of you know the Russians can't get their hands on it but should Europe be using that money to fund Ukrainian rearmament so Zelensky's in a position where he looks at America and think I can't rely on you and he looks at Europe and worries I can't rely on you either and that is that you know So Europe in the short term is not in any position to really act in a way that would make up for America saying, OK, we're done.

21:13And that's why you can see the pressure is intolerable and immense on Zelensky to cut a deal now. And why probably there will be something that comes out of this. And not least because if Zelensky is thinking, and again, this is the extra complexity, Zelensky is sat there thinking, well, maybe I can't rely on the Americans in future, but maybe we can rely on the continent of Europe. The very fact that European powers, including still reasonably big military spenders like the UK and France and so on, the very fact that we're not in the room. I'm sure there'll be some consultation and so on. But the very fact that much of this is being dictated as if this is something that you, Europe, will accept.

21:53Good example is even Trump has said, oh, we'll let Russia back into the G8. Well, you know, over to the G7, become the G8 again. They were expelled over the invasion of Crimea. You know, well, there are six other members of the G7 on the United States. But Trump doesn't think about that, right? He's just like, yeah, we'll let you back in. That's how Trump sees the world. But the fact that Europe, because its hard power is not substantial enough, is just sort of written out of the picture of much of this, tells Zelensky a lot, certainly in the short to medium term, about how useful Europe in and of itself will be as a power.

22:25though that said it is true to say that if he were to choose to try and fight on alone which ultimately this is going to be a bit of a sort of again overdoing the 90s the second world war stuff but a sort of 1940 kind of decision maybe for for Zelensky in terms of do we try and fight alone or at least without the united states or do we accept what the us is doing it is true to say as well that you know european support has been at least as substantial despite what trump says in his own mind substantial as american support certainly for the last year or so but it is an invidious situation for him.

22:56In a moment we'll be considering another Donald Trump relationship and that is the bromance that's emerged between him and the communist New York mayor Zoramam Dhani.

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23:39The News Agents. Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? I've spoken about... That's okay, you can just say yes. Okay. It's easier. it's easier than explaining it. So that was one of the most extraordinary out of an entire series of utterly extraordinary moments in the much-anticipated showdown in the Oval Office, which became a love-in in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and Zoran Mamdani, a man who, well, as you heard there, Mamdani before had been calling him a fascist and Trump had been calling him a communist. And neither seemed to mind very much. Shocking Washington, shocking the beltway, and I suspect many Americans as well.

24:21And shocking Republicans who had been kind of hoping that they would pitch Zoram Mandani as the evil face of the new Democratic Party. And this is the enemy. And there you have Donald Trump kind of in this bromance. And you thought at one stage, you know, God, you're going to need to get a room together because honestly, the loving was so intense. and it was just so far from what expectation had been beforehand that this was going to be a frosty meeting. This was going to be Zelensky and Trump, you know, February, Mark II. And it was nothing, nothing like that, which I suspect speaks to Trump's love of a bullsy New Yorker and also Mamdani's cleverness.

25:03He knows that he still needs federal aid from Donald Trump and was able to charm him. I thought that whole meeting showed why, and I know some people get angry about me saying this, but it is true, why, you know, both Trump and Mondani are both deeply interesting and in their own ways, deeply impressive politicians. That doesn't negate anything of all the bad stuff Trump does. One of the things I think sometimes misunderstood about Trump is he can demonstrate a remarkable kind of suppleness. And people always think of him as being as bombastic at his most bombastic moments, at his most vile moments, at his most crude moments, his most crass moments.

25:38And God knows there are so many of those. He's also a skilled politician. Right. And I think for lots of reasons, this sort of love in, I'm surprised at how sort of warm it was. But I'm not that surprised that it descended into a loving for this reason, right? Which is that partly, as you say, John, I mean, I think clearly Mamdani, who is very charming and clearly went in there and charmed him and did so for his own political purposes. That was very successful. Trump also loves winners, right? He loves winners. He will have been in his own way deeply impressed by what Mamdani did. And the sense in which he has, again, in his own way and in a sense, in his own image, took on the democratic establishment from within and beat them at their own game.

26:28Remind you of anybody? And I don't think Trump will be unaware of or insensible to all of these kind of figures who in their own way, and some of them would reject the characterization, but in their own way are taking to politics in a politics that Trump has shaped. right that they are in some way emulating themselves at least to some extent on trump's style of politics direct bombastic populist you know fundamentally you know very social media driven all of these things this political world that trump has helped create he is seeing a whole generation of politicians like mam danny basically come along and to some extent at least be a bit like trump but what you said about trump loving a winner is absolutely spot on and the way mam And Downey did it and coming from nowhere.

27:16And, you know, and Trump charts in this meeting the way his poll ratings keep going up. But the other thing that Trump loves is attention. And he likes people who can command attention in the media. You know, Donald Trump has all the newspapers delivered to him at the White House. He's still very old fashioned in that respect. Is he reading every article and every op-ed? No. Is he looking for who's getting the headlines? Yes. And he loved the fact that so many journalists were so wrapped in attention to this meeting. Now listen. I tell you, the press has eaten this thing up. You know, I've had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries.

27:52Nobody cared. This meeting that you people have gone, you know, outside you have hundreds of people waiting. This is just a small little group. For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting. The biggest people in the world, they come over from countries, nobody cares. But they did care about this meeting and it was a great meeting. Go ahead. Exactly. There are two men there. And again, it goes back to what I was just saying about their style of politics. These are two men who, in their own ways, are masters of the attention economy and the digital attention economy.