The Witkoff negotiation enterprise is distancing Russia from its security imperatives.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

It is not a glitch (that nothing gets resolved). It’s a feature. For it opens rather, a path for ‘Business’ to be done – for ‘stakeholder’ deals to be cut, and for billions to be shared out in payoffs. This is Trump’s geo-political transactional model: Business displaces traditional negotiation (at least while the money flows); Money is the politics.

Trump, Witkoff and Kushner are said to be confident that they can construct a financial reward system for western debt-holders, investors and politicians (and the Zelensky entourage, in the case of Ukraine) that succeeds in “retaining the financial rewards of war – without the ancillary ingredient of bloodshed”.

Once payments are apportioned – from the Trump-Witkoff perspective – the “territorial issues, security guarantees, EU membership status and the position of NATO are downstream details once the larger payment system is organized. Put another way, they are down to the stuff that really matters, the money”.

With this worldview, negotiations between the U.S. and Russia are being pursued by two New York real-estate ‘gurus’ (Witkoff and Kushner), together with Josh Gruenbaum, who has also been appointed as secretary to Trump’s ‘Gaza Peace Board’. Gruenbaum’s previous work experience has been with the KKR fund, which, although not strictly a ‘vulture fund’, is specialist in aggressive distressed-debt investing.

Where are the experienced professionals from Russia’s foreign service in these talks? They are notably absent. Foreign Minister Lavrov does not attend.

Why? Because the Trump-Witkoff hypothesis is that the Ukraine conflict can be “solved by a system where the opportunity for financial benefit continues. That is – that those who have had a financial benefit in the Ukraine war – the ‘stakeholders’ – continue to enjoy financial benefit. Put more cynically, ‘The Prosperity Agenda to Support Ukraine’s Reconstruction’ is codespeak for the U.S. Senate and EU to retain a financial mechanism to exploit for personal benefit”.

Essentially, this is the Trump-New York real-estate experience transferred to a real-life conflict – in which ‘blood’ usually represents the true currency invested in a conflict. This approach underlines the West’s degradation into a nihilism that views sacrifices made by men and women in support of their country as a trifle to be bought out.

Look at the Witkoff team — on the one hand, there is Blackrock and its CEO Larry Fink, who are commissioned by Witkoff to raise the reconstruction funds for Ukraine. Larry Fink also liaises closely with the Witkoff team on divvying out the potential re-construction ‘opportunities’ (but is not directly involved in the Moscow talks with President Putin).

Then there are the Rothschilds who are the principal advisers to Kiev’s Ministry of Finance and who are responsible for managing the huge Ukrainian bond debt of more than $216 billion – that is to say, the Rothschilds are responsible for negotiating with bond creditors and managing their claims on Kiev. There are also sovereign creditors who have guaranteed loans to Ukraine from financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank. The EU alone has guaranteed €193 bn.

These ‘stakeholders’ in the Witkoff framework — the creditors of Ukraine, the interests of Blackrock and possibly KKR — stand to do well out of a reconstruction package, in the case of a political settlement agreed between the U.S. and Moscow. “As of February 2026, Ukraine’s sovereign dollar bonds are trading in the 60 to 76 cents on the dollar range, reflecting intense market sensitivity to potential peace proposals. Prices have rallied significantly from lows in the 19–20 cent range seen in late 2024 and early 2025 as diplomatic momentum builds”.

Rothschilds may, or may not, have a direct interest in the Ukraine debt package, but as a ‘firm’ they have a bitter history in their dealings with President Putin over what happened to Yukos. The latter was the largest oil and gas enterprise in Russia in the 1990s.

In 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then head of the Russian oil giant Yukos, appointed Lord Jacob Rothschild as the “guarantor” or “protector” of his controlling stake in the company. The transfer of control of Yukos (which consisted of much of Russia’s oil and gas resources) to Lord Rothschild was triggered automatically in 2003 by Khodorkovsky’s arrest by Russian authorities. The intent was to put these resources beyond President Putin’s reach. However, Yukos subsequently was nationalised and wiped out by tax impositions which effectively voided its assets of any value.

On the new ‘money-in’ side to the Witkoff ‘balance sheet’, the EU and the U.S. are pitching for an $800 billion post-settlement rebuilding fund for Ukraine war damage. All of Witkoff’s identified stakeholders have an interest in getting a slice of this cake — Zelensky needs a slice to share around his ‘stakeholders’ and the EU is lining up its defence contractors to claim their portion of the $800 billion action, too.

And on the Russian side, there is Kirill Dmitriev, the Wall Street-trained Head of Russia’s National Wealth Fund, who initiated efforts to offer investment opportunities to the United States as part of the stakeholder strategy to restore economic ties and foster negotiations. These included joint projects on rare earth minerals and Arctic development.

From Moscow’s perspective – and with Moscow’s clear understanding of the Trump’s mercantilist and transactional psyche — perhaps having Washington pulled by ‘deal’ opportunities into talking with Russia (after a long period of severed communications) and when the U.S. leadership is inconstant and capricious – engagement with Witkoff and Kushner may have been seen as the better side to valour.

However, this ‘business first’ methodology has a major flaw: The ‘negotiations’ with the Witkoff team are not working. Matters are moving in the wrong direction, as Foreign Minister Lavrov has underlined in frank language in two recent interviews (last week with Rick Sanchez on Russia Today, and on Tuesday with Russia’s NTV television channel).

FM Lavrov emphasised that the understandings reached at Anchorage are stuck – and in fact are being rowed back, “moving in the wrong direction”, Lavrov warned. Not only are relations cooling; asymmetrical actions are increasing and the risk of escalation growing, Lavrov suggested.

So what is going on?

Firstly, underlying Trump’s approach to his ‘business strategy’ are several distinct parameters — the principal one being the deal-making culture centred on a ‘financial rewards system’. This approach ignores reality. The issue of Russia’s relations with Ukraine (and the U.S.) are not centred on the notional cutting up of a billion dollar re-construction cake.

The crux rather, is the imperative to reach an agreement on where exactly the boundary to NATO’s sphere of interest should be limited. And by extension, to where Russia and Central Asia’s boundary extends.

But matters are moving in the opposite direction: Lavrov’s frustration is very evident in these interviews. Trump is becoming more and more focussed on American domination (driven in no small part by the U.S.’ dollar and debt crisis).

Trump’s debt-driven focus on domination lies in diametric contradiction to a multi-polarity of powers based on respect for each other’s national security interests.

This leads to the second parameter — it is simply that conflicts and wars are not all susceptible to monetary buy-offs. There is ‘history’ and lives sacrificed. Only a resolution that encompasses an understanding of the full context which brought the conflict into being in the first place is likely to succeed.

And it is the root causes to the dispute that are precisely what is excluded under the Witkoff framing.

Separately, the legacy culture of European and U.S. banking and financial interests provides the predisposition to preserving the Ukrainian status quo as parcel to their historic stance.

The ‘taking care of stakeholders’ approach then automatically devolves into seeking a continuation of existing structures of power and authority in Kiev, without which the monetary worth of Ukrainian bonds — many of which are held by European governments – will fall to zero.

Market analyst Alex Krainer has stated that “European nations, including the UK, are in a catastrophic fiscal position, partly because they have lent (or guaranteed) hundreds of billions to Ukraine that are likely to become “bad debts””.

Moscow has been very clear that there must be a transformation made to the leadership culture in Ukraine for any stable coexistence between Russia and Kiev to be viable. For Moscow, the continuation of the Zelensky regime culture of radical hostility would be viewed as setting up Russia to face a future of regular bouts of repeated conflict as Ukraine is periodically rearmed and re-grouped by European states.

Any mooted change of Ukrainian leadership style however, would pull the rug from under Witkoff’s carefully arranged ‘financial reward system’. An outcome to the conflict brought about by military facts on the ground leading to a transformed culture in Kiev would be anathema to the stakeholder benefit scheme.

The ‘stakeholders’ are united in opposing such eventuality. The Witkoff plan effectively fuels their opposition to any change in the status quo.

It is not surprising then that Foreign Minister Lavrov is signalling a backing off from the Witkoff negotiation enterprise. It is not working. It is distancing Russia from its security imperatives. Rather, it paves the path for a continuation of war against Russia.