As it rushes to finalize Ukraine ceasefire, signs US team vulnerable to Russia manipulation

Russia is manipulating inexperienced Trump team operating without proper expert support, ex NSC aide Fiona Hill warned: “The Russians are thinking right now that they can manipulate this.”

U.S. officials will shuttle between Russian and Ukrainian teams at “proximity” talks in a Saudi Arabian hotel on Monday to try to finalize a ceasefire deal, the top U.S. envoy on Ukraine said today.

“They’re going to be proximity discussions, meaning one group’s going to be in this room, one group’s going to be in this room, and we’ll sit and talk, go back and forth, sort of like shuttle diplomacy in a hotel,” retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy on Ukraine, told ABC today. “And that’s how it’s going to work. And we’ll find out where it stands.”

Ukraine’s president confirmed the arrangement.

“There will be a meeting of Ukraine and America and then some shuttle diplomacy, as our American colleagues said, America with Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters after meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store today.

Kellogg said the U.S. team will include members of his team, members of National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s team, as well as State Department policy planning director* Michael Anton. The NSC did not respond to queries of who would be coming from the NSC, but one person expected is Andrew Peek, the NSC senior director for Europe, who previously served as Waltz’s national security advisor when Waltz served in Congress.

Diplomatic understands that the U.S. side aspires to make enough rapid progress to be able to announce a ceasefire deal in short order. It also hoped to hold some sort of trilateral meeting with all three parties as early as Tuesday. The NSC did not respond to queries at what level such a trilateral meeting might be held, should one materialize.

Moscow will be represented at the technical talks by Grigory Karasin, a former diplomat who was involved in negotiating the Minsk Accords and who now chairs the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs; and Sergei Beseda, an advisor to Russia’s FSB, Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said today.

Beseda until June 2024 served as Russia’s negotiator in talks that ultimately led to a multi-nation prisoner swap, including the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. But Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly replaced Beseda two months before the prisoner swap was finalized in August.

The American side is far less experienced than its Russian counterparts. And some of its members show a disturbing predilection to be spun and deceived by the Russians.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who has become the administration’s chief counterpart with the Russians, this week gushed about the Trump/Putin phone call on Tuesday, and expressed the conviction that Putin was acting in good faith.

While Ukraine reported hundreds of Russian drones and missiles continued to attack Ukrainian cities following the Trump/Putin phone call, Witkoff said that he believed what the Russians were evidently falsely telling him, that Russia had shot down its own drones based on an order by Putin.

“Pres. Putin issued an order within ten minutes of his call with the president directing Russian forces not to be attacking any Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” Witkoff said in a video interviewon Wednesday posted to Twitter.

“The Russians tell me this morning that seven of their drones were on their way when President Putin issued his order and they were shot down by Russian forces,” Witkoff said.

“I tend to believe that President Putin is operating in good faith,” Witkoff said.

Of the Trump Putin phone call, Witkoff extolled to Fox’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday: “It was these two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind. And it was honestly a privilege and an honor for me to set sit there and listen to that conversation.”

“I think it's going to lead to long term peace and prosperity in the region, two leaders working… for the betterment of the world,” he said.

Former Trump first term NSC Russia advisor Fiona Hill warned this month that inexperienced members of the current Trump team like Witkoff were getting manipulated by the Russians.

“One of the risks that we’re seeing at the moment….in some of the statements from Special Envoy Witkoff and others…is that they’ve taken completely on board both the Russian talking points and the Russian positions,” Hill said at a symposium on Ukraine at the Council on Foreign Relations on March 6.

“With all due respect to Special Envoy Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and everybody else who went there [to talks with the Russians in Saudi Arabia last month], without any interpretation or context, they have no clue about what the Russians are actually talking to them about,” Hill continued. “Their interpretation is coming from directly speaking to Ushakov, [Russian foreign minister Sergey] Lavrov and Kirill Dmitriev [the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund], who all speak excellent English, and who have been around this block forever.”

“We haven’t even got the junior varsity…team here,” Hill said. “We’ve got the intermural…basically the pickup game. And the [Russians] are thinking right now that they can manipulate this.”

Beyond being potentially unwittingly manipulated by the Russians, as Witkoff seems to be, some others members of the US team have expressed the view that they don’t think providing support to Ukraine to defend itself from Russian invasion is a vital US national security interest.

State Department counselor Anton, who Kellogg said would be attending the talks in Saudi Arabia, argued in a debate in May 2024 that supporting Ukraine was not a vital American interest.

“I don’t believe there’s a core United States’ interest over there,” Anton argued in a May 24, 2024, debate with the National Review’s Noah Rothman hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute available on YouTube.

Correction 3/25/2025: Michael Anton is the State Department director of policy planning, not counselor, as previously posted.

Photo: U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, National Security Advisor Mosaad bin Mohammad al-Aiban, the Russian president's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Saudi Arabia February 20, 2025. Evelyn Hockstein/AFP/Getty Images

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