We’re about to find out if the Trump-Witkoff strategy works

Almost exactly seven years ago, on Monday March 19, 2018, Donald Trump decided he wanted to telephone Vladimir Putin to congratulate the Russian president on his re-election. 

The call was set up for the following day, though Trump’s then national security advisor H.R. McMaster ordered his team to give the President helpful note cards. The first said, in capitals: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE ON ELECTION WIN.”

Of course Trump completely ignored the instruction and applauded Vladimir on his triumph. Trump also neglected to mention the Novichok poison attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, which had taken place earlier that month — and which British intelligence officers had characterized as a Kremlin-ordered assassination attempt. Instead, much to the disgust of national security types on both side of the Atlantic, he invited Putin to Washington. 

Two days later, McMaster had been fired and John Bolton hired as his replacement. Bolton was later fired, too. 

Fast forward seven years to today and Trump and Putin are about to speak by telephone about ending the war in Ukraine, and now nobody would dream of giving the American president a bossy card telling him what he can or can’t say. 

Trump has completely upended the way American diplomacy operates. He does all the capitalizing these days. 

“Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains,” declared Trump on Truth Social yesterday. 

“Thousands of young soldiers, and others, are being killed. Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW.”

The details of the “Final Agreement” remain to be seen. It is clear that Crimea was never going to be handed back to Ukraine. But it seems that Trump, the current National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy who has been in Russia prepping the talks, are confident of securing some sort of land concessions from Putin. Whether these concessions satisfy Ukrainian negotiators or placate European leaders is another question entirely.  

“I think we’ll be talking about land, it’s a lot of land,” said Trump yesterday. “It’s a lot different than it was before the war, as you know. We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants,” – namely, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear site in Europe. “That’s a big question. But I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides.” What’s almost certain is that Trump is not about to start hectoring Putin about war crimes. Trump’s Justice Department has withdrawn the US from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, which the Biden administration joined in 2023. Trump is more interested in peace than justice and shares Putin’s skepticism as to the biases of such legal enquiries. 

The Trump-Witkoff strategy has been to present Russia’s leader with an opportunity to show the world he can be more accommodating than his enemies believe. We’ll find out today if Putin has any intention of playing nice. We can probably guess, however, that, seven years on from his first offer, Trump might again invite Putin to Washington or accept an offer from Putin to visit Moscow.