Witkoff: Trump has talked about a tariff-free zone for Ukraine. That would be game-changing—industry would move in fast.
Ukrainian producers could ship to the US without tariffs and out-compete others. Ukrainians earned this with their courage in the fight.
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Witkoff: We’re heading to Moscow, then straight to Abu Dhabi. There, working groups will focus on military-to-military talks and prosperity.
Prosperity matters. Jared and I push it hard and Larry Fink is advising us. He volunteered for the job.
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Witkoff: We’ve made real progress towards peace in Ukraine and we’re near the end. I’m optimistic. I spent hours with Ukraine’s team—Budanov and Umerov.
They’re outstanding negotiators. We’ve worked together intensely, maybe a hundred hours.
Kellogg: Putin does not want to become Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia.
He has sacrificed Russia so much and caused so much pain that he is trying to find a way out. He knows he will not win this war in Ukraine. 1/
Kellogg: Russia is not winning this war.
Putin’s definition of winning is different from mine. He measures progress in meters, not miles. Russia is not in Odesa, not in Kyiv, and has not really moved beyond the Donbas. 2/
Kellogg: This is a harsh winter, especially in Kyiv.
I understand the temperatures and the conditions on the ground. But if Ukraine gets through January and February and reaches March and April, the advantage shifts to Ukraine, not Russia. 3/
“When you recover 100 bodies in a single day, you cannot talk or eat.
The perfume of war is the smell of death and decomposition. It follows you everywhere,” says Oleksii Yukov — a man who has spent 27 years searching for the bodies of the dead and missing — UP 1/
During Russia’s full-scale war, Yukov’s search group Platsdarm has recovered more than 3,500 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.
Before 2022, they had already returned thousands of victims of past wars and political repression. 2/
In 2014, during the occupation of Sloviansk, Yukov stayed in the city and helped evacuate the bodies of Ukrainian troops.
For this, militants of “DNR” captured him, took him to the SBU basement, and read out a death sentence. 3/