Id say you won’t believe this, but Ive said that too many times. The Wall Street Journal dropped a huge investigation yesterday about Trump’s Ukraine peace talks, and the only surprising part is that anyone still calls this foreign policy. What they described was a business development scheme for the presidents friends, donors, and family members. And because it landed on a holiday weekend behind a paywall, most people still have no idea what’s in it.
The story opens with the kind of scene that tells you everything. Last month, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s real-estate buddy turned special envoy, hosted Kirill Dmitriev at his Miami waterfront palace. Dmitriev isn’t some mid-level bureaucrat. Hes Putin’s chosen negotiator and the head of Russias sovereign wealth fund. Then Jared Kushner rolls in from his island mansion known as Billionaire Bunker. These three men sat around and drafted what became the 28-point peace plan that leaked last week and was immediately recognized as Russias wish list.
Polands prime minister Donald Tusk summed it up in one line: We know this is not about peace. Its about business.
Honestly, he was being polite. What the Journal uncovered looked more like a coordinated looting operation disguised as diplomacy.
The basic setup is simple. Dmitriev pitched a plan where U.S. companies could tap roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets that Europe seized after the invasion. That pot of money would fund joint U.S.-Russia investment projects, build a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine, open access to Arctic minerals, and even include a joint Mars mission with SpaceX. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and it all becomes a bargaining chip for access to Siberian resources.
Inside Trumpworld, this isn’t a problem. Its the point. His advisers talk about turning American investors into commercial guarantors of peace, which is a poetic way of saying the quiet part loudly.
And then it gets worse. Gentry Beach, a college friend of Don Jr. and longtime donor, is already negotiating to buy into a Russian Arctic gas project once sanctions vanish. Stephen P. Lynch, a Trump megadonor, paid $600,000 to a lobbyist connected to Don Jr. so he could get Treasury approval to buy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. He has been working with Don Jr. directly. A pipeline that became a symbol of Europes dependence on Russia could end up owned by Trump donors as a reward for brokering a peace deal that guts Ukrainian sovereignty.
According to Western intelligence, these Miami meetings were the culmination of a Russian strategy that started before Trump even took office: bypass the national security system entirely and get the U.S. to treat Russia as a business opportunity instead of a military threat. Divide America from Europe, reshape the continents economic order, and reward the Kremlin for invading a sovereign country.
Its working. After the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, a European intelligence agency quietly sent a report to other governments detailing the commercial deals Trump’s team was pursuing with Russia. European officials were shocked. Treasury sanctions experts in the U.S. have learned more about Witkoffs work from the British than from their own administration.
Our allies are sending intelligence to us because Trump’s envoy won’t.
Witkoff has visited Russia six times this year. He has not visited Ukraine once.
When Kyiv asked for Tomahawk missiles to strengthen their hand, Witkoff told them to ask for a tariff exemption instead. He pitched them on the idea of soldiers putting down their weapons and retraining for Silicon Valley salaries running American-built AI data centers. He said this to officials from a country where apartment buildings are still being hit, children are being kidnapped, and soldiers are defending literal rubble.
Meanwhile, the actual special envoy to Ukraine, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, just resigned. He was frozen out while watching Trump’s team blame Ukraine for stalling as Russia dragged negotiations into the mud. Ukraine was supposed to accept terms that would erase its sovereignty so donors could move faster on gas deals.
Even basic guardrails are gone. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent objected to letting sanctioned Dmitriev enter the U.S. Trump overruled him. When Witkoff met Putin in August, he skipped the State Department notetaker, leaving no official record, then misinterpreted Putin’s offer and briefed Europe on a deal the Kremlin wasn’t even proposing. European officials were startled. This is the person shaping U.S. foreign policy.
After one videoconference with Europe, Witkoff left for Ibiza and stopped answering calls. European leaders literally could not reach the American envoy handling the Russian war.
Russia has been explicit: it wants U.S. investors, not Europe, to profit in postwar Russia. European leaders have talked trash about the plan, so Russia wants them cut out entirely. So the country that launched an invasion gets commercial rewards, Europe gets sidelined, and Trump’s donors get their pick of energy assets.
The peace plan reflects all of it. Ukraine must give up the Donbas and slash its military by half. No NATO membership, ever. Sanctions on Russia vanish, Putin is reintegrated into the global economy, and Russia gets to call this a victory. It was so advantageous to the Kremlin that even Republicans balked. Europe responded with its own version that only discusses territorial issues after a ceasefire and increases Ukraines defensive strength instead of cutting it.
Putin’s billionaire allies are already sending representatives to meet with American firms about rare-earth mining and energy deals. The gold rush is underway before the war ends.
Witkoffs explanation? If everyone makes money, peace will follow. Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land if everybodys thriving, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts.
Everybody except the Ukrainians who died defending their homes. Everybody except Europeans who now have to live next to a Russia rewarded for conquest. Everybody except Americans who assumed their foreign policy wasn’t being outsourced to the presidents donors.
The Journal ends by asking whether Putin is doing this to end the war or to keep the U.S. pacified while he drags it out, inch by inch, until Ukraine is exhausted. And the truth is ugly. The people shaping America’s position have financial incentives to close a deal no matter what it costs the world. The people who would benefit from sanctions relief are sitting at the table. Europeans are being cut out of decisions that reshape their security. And Ukrainians are being told to trade territory for AI jobs.
The Journal called the investigation Make Money, Not War, but that’s a polite headline. What they actually revealed is the privatization of American foreign policy for the enrichment of a small circle of billionaires. A liquidation sale masquerading as diplomacy.