'Dim Philby'? No, Witkoff is actually a skilled negotiator

If anyone has had more negative press than Donald Trump in the latest flurry of US efforts to end the war in Ukraine, it is Steve Witkoff, the man he appointed his special envoy at the very start of his second term. One Western critic even dubbed him “Dim Philby”. But the knives have been out for Witkoff in Washington pretty much from the start, and the charge sheet against him is long.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

The latest case against him, which comes with calls from Trump opponents for his dismissal, relates to a five-minute phone call that was leaked to Bloomberg News. The call, on 14 October, was with Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin's foreign policy adviser, and had Witkoff advising how best to handle Trump - which included flattering the US president's peacemaking ambitions, praising the agreement on Gaza, and supporting a similar multi-point approach to ending the war in Ukraine.

The popular theory in the US is that it must have been leaked by the Russians, perhaps to show the extent to which Trump was still onside. Equally, though, Trump has enough detractors of his shifting Ukraine policy at home with an interest in branding the president a puppet of the Kremlin - which is how the call, with its friendly tone, was largely presented. The Russians, for their part, blamed, among others, the Europeans, who, they said, wanted to stop any Trump-Russia-Ukraine deal in its tracks.

Another leaked call is also doing the rounds, this time between two Russian officials, Ushakov and Putin's chief Ukraine negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev. They discuss the genesis of the first (leaked) 28-point plan and claim officials from the US, Russia and Ukraine were all involved in the process. Dmitriev has called it "fake", but the leak would appear to be an attempt to put Ukraine's involvement on the record.