Two men, Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, come up with a peace plan, but they are two men who know a lot about financial deals and clearly not much about peace negotiation.
From The Atlantic, 22 November 2025, written by Anne Applebaum
'Why is the Trump White House pushing Ukraine to accept a Russian plan that paves the way for another war? The document offers some hints, declaring that the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100 billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this money in Ukraine and receive “50% of the profits from this venture.” Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia would “enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” according to the plan. This is no surprise: Putin has spoken of “several companies” positioning themselves to resume business ties between his country and the United States.
In March, the Financial Times reported on one of these negotiations. Mattias Warnig—a German businessman and former Russian spy who has close links to Putin and is under U.S. sanctions—has been seeking a back channel to the Trump administration through U.S. investors who want to reopen the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline, part of which was blown up by Ukrainian saboteurs early in the war. One American familiar with the plan told the Financial Times that the U.S. investors were essentially being offered “money for nothing,” which is, obviously, an attractive prospect.
Other details of the business negotiations carried out by Witkoff and Dmitriev remain secret. Ukrainians and Europeans, who would pay the military and economic price for this plan, deserve to know them. Above all, American citizens should be asking for the details of any business negotiations now under way. This plan has been proposed, in our name, as a part of U.S. foreign policy. But it would not serve our economic or security interests. So whose interests would it serve? Which U.S. companies and which oligarchs would benefit? Are Trump’s family members and political supporters among them? The arrangements on offer should be public knowledge before any kind of deal is signed.
For a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan, if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries, leading to terrible suffering. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit right into that tradition.'
