Trump’s Ukraine ‘Peace Talks’ Were a Business Development Scheme for His Donors

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 - the one critics, Republicans included, immediately called Russia’s wish list.

That same weekend, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk reminded NATO allies that the alliance’s foundation was “solidarity, not egoistic interests.”

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 Russian central bank assets that Europe froze 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 a donor to his father’s campaign, has been in talks to buy a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it’s ever released from sanctions. 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. 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. Before the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, a European intelligence service quietly sent a report to senior officials in several European countries detailing the economic plans Trump’s envoy was discussing 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.

So our allies are telling our own Treasury more than Trump’s envoy is.

Witkoff has visited Russia five 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 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 announced he’s leaving. 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. Dmitriev is under U.S. sanctions, and the State Department had to lift them temporarily just so he could visit Washington in April. When Witkoff met Putin in August, he reportedly misread Putin’s offer - hearing talk of a “peaceful withdrawal” of Ukrainian troops as an offer for Russian troops to pull out - then set up a video call to brief Ukrainian and European officials on it. Kyiv, European capitals and even Trump’s own staff were left trying to figure out what had actually been agreed. This is the person shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Three days after that Putin meeting, Witkoff was in Ibiza meeting Qatar’s prime minister about Gaza - while he was also 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 cap its military at 600,000 troops. 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,” he told the Journal. If everybody’s prospering, “that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

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.

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said Europe seized about $300 billion in Russian central bank assets - Europe froze them. It said a European intelligence report on the envoy’s business talks went out after the Alaska summit - it went out before. It said Witkoff had visited Russia six times this year - it was five. It said the peace plan cut Ukraine’s army in half - it capped it at 600,000 troops. It said Keith Kellogg had resigned - he’d announced he was leaving. It stitched two of Witkoff’s quotes into one. It said Stephen Lynch worked with Don Jr. directly - the Journal reported he paid a lobbyist close to Don Jr. And some lines about named people couldn’t be backed up: a quote from Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk (the line now quotes and links his own post from that weekend), that Scott Bessent objected to Dmitriev’s visit and Trump overruled him, and that Witkoff skipped a State Department notetaker, pitched Ukraine on retraining soldiers for AI data center jobs and stopped answering European calls from Ibiza. Those lines are now cut back to what the reporting shows.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say it was critics, Republicans included, who called the peace plan Russia’s wish list, stick to what the Journal reported about Gentry Beach’s gas talks, and no longer say why our allies are sharing what they know.