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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Special envoys of U.S. President Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will participate in talks on the situation in Ukraine taking place today in Oslo. Witkoff will be present in person, Kushner by video link, the Norwegian government informed. The release said that the Americans will join meetings between Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The publication "GORDON" reports what is known about the Trump administration’s intentions ahead of the meeting.
According to Axios, Witkoff has already left for Oslo, while Kushner remains in the U.S., supposedly because he has the flu. 21 in October Witkoff plans to visit Russia to meet with the illegitimate president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, to present ideas developed during consultations with Ukraine and partners, media sources said. According to the publication’s interlocutors, U.S., Ukrainian and European representatives worked together over the past week to develop proposals. 18 in October both of Trump’s special representatives spoke with Zelensky.
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In addition, today the president of Ukraine spoke by phone with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose position on Russia’s war against Ukraine, as NBC News reported last year, differs from Witkoff’s and other Trump administration officials’ views. Rubio represents the White House “wing” that holds Russia responsible for the war, while Witkoff, U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance and others at the time called Ukraine “the main obstacle” to peace and insisted that pressure should be applied to Kyiv rather than Moscow.
The meeting in Oslo will take place against the backdrop of deteriorating Ukraine–U.S. relations. They have intensified, in particular, after Trump announced a 9 October diesel deal with the illegitimate president of the aggressor country, Russia, Vladimir Putin, and restrictions on Starlink’s operation for Ukrainian military. Zelensky criticized these decisions. Trump, for his part, said it is harder to deal with the Ukrainian president than with Putin.
19 in October Ukrainian media sources reported that the U.S. demands Ukraine withdraw troops from the Donbas without offering anything in return. The Wall Street Journal that same day reported that Putin proposed holding a meeting in China this month with Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. His goal, sources say, is to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow.
In the evening, speaking with reporters, Trump announced his readiness to meet with Putin and Xi Jinping and made several sharp remarks about Zelensky.
He said that the president of Ukraine “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” when he criticizes him, and that “it’s time for someone else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”
He added that Russia, which shells Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and kills peaceful civilians, supposedly “behaves normally toward Ukraine” and “isn’t really doing much.”
"You know what? We have given Ukraine a lot. And they gave us nothing. Remember that. We provided hundreds of billions of dollars. I was the one who gave Ukraine the Javelin. I did that. Obama gave them pillows. You know the saying: '[Former President Barack] Obama gave them sheets and pillows. And Trump gave them Javelins.' So don’t tell me about Ukraine. We gave Ukraine a lot. And they gave us—nothing," the White House chief added.
The NYT writes that the way Trump has stepped up efforts to rehabilitate Russia and Putin into diplomatic society (he invited the Kremlin chief to the G20 summit in Miami) is striking:
in its speed,
in its portrayal of Zelensky as the main obstacle to peace,
and in its shameless denial that Russia continues the war.
White House correspondent David Sanger, who writes about Trump’s policy for the paper, notes: the incumbent U.S. president’s contempt for his Ukrainian counterpart and willingness to trust Putin are not new. But now the situation has changed—Trump has become more resolute.
"He is convincing the Ukrainian leader that further resistance to regain the occupied territories in the country’s eastern regions is not worth the effort. At the same time, Mr. Trump asserts that Ukraine could gain financially if it abandons objections to a deal—even one largely written on terms favorable to Russia. It is with such a message that the American side will address Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday in Oslo," the journalist said.
According to the NYT, Trump’s son-in-law Kushner will also fly to Russia 21 in October. The U.S. president’s special representatives will meet with Putin in Saint Petersburg and will talk about freeing the American held in the U.S., Steven Gabbard, a 75-year-old man who was detained in 2022 and accused of fighting on the side of Ukraine and sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony.
The release of an elderly prisoner costs Putin nothing and brings no benefit to Ukraine. "But amid the U.S. midterm elections this allows Trump to show that he is conducting an 'America First' foreign policy, complemented by touching images of the prisoner’s reunion with his family," the journalist emphasized.
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He believes that the broader goal of Trump and Putin is to normalize relations. Among these efforts Sanger counts probable plans to organize a trilateral meeting of Putin, Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November in China. Trump suggested that the main topic of the meeting would not be Ukraine but “denuclearization,” although it likely concerns arms control, since it is unlikely any of these states would agree to reduce their arsenals, Sanger writes for the NYT. And that is what Putin wants—to broaden the agenda so that Ukraine is only one of the issues. In a month’s time all three could meet in Miami.
The change Trump has shown is unprecedented, says Richard Haass, senior adviser at investment firm Centerview Partners, who served as a diplomat in previous U.S. administrations. In his view, in recent history there have been no cases that could serve as a relevant analogy to the current situation.
"The reason it’s hard to find a precedent where America switched sides in a similar conflict is that such a precedent does not actually exist," he explained. "In this situation, the unprecedented thing is the decision to change course: to punish the victim of invasion—Ukraine—and at the same time reward the aggressor."
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "NYT – про послання від Трампа Зеленському, з яким Віткофф полетів в Осло". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
