Audio leaks occur at night. Two intercepted phone calls, on October 14 and 29: in the first, Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy, gave instructions to Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s historic foreign policy adviser and former ambassador to the US, on how to “approach” the American president on a peace proposal regarding Ukraine. Maybe exactly one in 28 points. In the second place, the person who was finally listened to was Kirill Dmitriev, the Kiev-born, Stanford-educated manager and president of the Russian Sovereign Fund, who was quietly forging parallel diplomacy between the Kremlin and the White House. Bloomberg got the audio and published it all. The most sensitive thing was Witkoff’s sentence, quoted verbatim: “Putin should call Trump to congratulate him on the peace agreement in Gaza, saying that Russia supports him and that he respects him as a man of peace. From there, it would be a very good decision.” It was a trigger point for Washington: a White House envoy suggesting to the Kremlin a strategy to woo Trump. But Trump, returning to Florida on Air Force One, defended his friend: «This is normal. He has to sell this to Ukraine, he has to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what mediators do.” And he added: “I imagine he would say the same thing to the Ukrainians.”
CONVERSATION
Extreme ease for content that, according to some Republican lawmakers, “looks like a favor to Moscow.” Ushakov does not deny its substance. “The essence of this conversation is confidential. I will not comment, no one should comment.” He spoke generally about fakes and defined the leak as “unacceptable”, he would discuss it with Witkoff by phone (the conversation captured was on WhatsApp). Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov broadened the scope: “There will be a large number of people, in different countries, who will do everything to sabotage the path to negotiations.” In doing so, he pointed the finger at Europe and Ukraine. Meanwhile, in Washington, a storm was rising among Republicans. Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick spoke of the “ridiculous show” that endangers foreign policy, and called for Atlantic Secretary of State Rubio to be allowed to work. Don Bacon, another deputy, was particularly sharp. «Witkoff acted as if he was being paid by Russia. But the crux of the mystery is the mole hunt. Who managed to gain access to the phone calls and pass them on? Who provided the audio to Bloomberg? The hypotheses overlap. The American CIA and NSA have the technical means, according to a source quoted by the Guardian “many in the agency suffer from a soft attitude towards Russia”. However, internal escapes carry very high risks for those who organize them.
HYPOTHESIS
Then there was the British trail: London, irritated by Witkoff’s perceived pro-Russian stance, chose to act. The Russian service was raised as a lateral hypothesis: the SVR or GRU had a history of interceptions, but the leak damaged the Kremlin’s credibility. The only reason was the internal settlement between the hawk and dove groups. Very impossible. Ukraine’s hand remains. Kiev would have more than one reason to blow up the secret relationship between Witkoff and Dmitriev, which was the genesis of the first 28-point “unbalanced” peace plan towards Moscow. Underestimating Trump’s favorite interlocutor would give Ukraine an advantage at the negotiating table, while risking upsetting Trump. A bold and immoral move, in accordance with the intelligence culture of General Kyrylo Budanov, the leader of Gur who in recent years has signed “impossible operations”: sabotage across the border, deep infiltration. Budanov himself returns in the final scene of the mystery. Because while the world was discussing the leak, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, Ukrainian plane 007 met a Russian plane. Ushakov confirmed: «They do this periodically and discuss very sensitive issues, including prisoner exchanges». In the audience, Russian TV reported, was “US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll”, who appeared “out of the blue”.
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