The coincidence made the revelations all the more embarrassing. On Tuesday, November 25, in the early afternoon, US President Donald Trump posted a message on his social network, Truth Social, welcoming what he called “tremendous progress” in negotiations over Ukraine. He wrote that only “a few points of disagreement” remained, and announced a new trip to Moscow by his friend and special envoy, Steve Witkoff. The goal would be to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign the plan, despite recent adjustments introduced by Europe to rebalance its content. Meanwhile, Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll was tasked with holding further talks with the Ukrainians.

The US administration believes its latest, somewhat uncoordinated, diplomatic push might eventually succeed. But that same afternoon, Bloomberg published explosive revelations that offered an unprecedented look at US-Russia relations over the past months. The report included full transcripts of two separate phone calls. The first was between Steve Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic adviser and former Russian ambassador to Washington. The second was between Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the Kremlin’s main negotiator.

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