Trudy Rubin: Follow the money to understand Trump's plan for peace in Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal nailed it last week with a headline that read, “Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine.”

That headline captures why the president is so eager to end Vladimir Putin’s war by sacrificing the Ukrainian victim to the Russian aggressor. And it helps explain why Donald Trump’s negotiators are returning home from Moscow empty-handed again.

Without this explanation, it’s hard to grasp how Trump endorsed a 28-point “peace” plan for Ukraine based on direct input from a Kremlin negotiator, without any Ukrainian or European consultation. (Although a “revised” plan still favors Moscow, Putin continues to demand even more than the initial version.)

Yes, Trump’s unending quest for a Nobel Peace Prize and his infatuation with the Russian despot figure into his kowtow to Putin. But I believe the Journal’s call to “follow the money” is right on the ruble.

Trump’s capitulation to the Kremlin shames our country even more than the U.S. killing of civilians clinging to a burned-out Venezuelan boat.

The Journal’s exposé details how Moscow’s representative sold Trump and his team on the idea they could get inside access to immense riches in Russia if the war were stopped quickly on Putin’s terms. Never mind that meant betraying NATO allies as well as Ukraine.

Indeed, the Kremlin has long dangled visions of lucrative deals before the White House in an effort to woo the president. Putin has used wealthy Russian businessmen to develop contacts with the Trump administration, dating back to 2016.

Kirill Dmitriev, the key Russian negotiator in Ukraine talks and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, is the main salesman for a grandiose future that enhances certain Americans’ wealth.

The Harvard-educated Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, has cleverly played on the greed and naivete of Steve Witkoff and first son-in-law Jared Kushner, real estate moguls turned Trump peace negotiators. He convinced the pair — at a secret meeting at Witkoff’s Miami waterfront mansion in October — to view Russia not as a military threat, but as a cornucopia of investment possibilities to which friendly U.S. investors would have early access.

That vision depends, of course, on the end of the war, the lifting of sanctions against Russia, and the U.S. welcoming Moscow back into the global economy.

It was Dmitriev who provided much of the input into the infamous 28-point Trump plan that read like Russian talking points. The proposal made no demands on the Russian aggressor, but required Ukraine give up key defensive positions and land it still controls while shrinking and disarming its military.

Equally outrageous, however, were the points that called for using much of Russia’s $200 billion-plus of frozen assets in European banks to invest in a U.S.-Russian investment “vehicle” to implement “joint projects” (and much of the rest to facilitate U.S. investment in Ukraine, from which the Americans would take 50% of the profits).

This is the money the European Union still hopes to use as collateral for loans to arm Ukraine against further Russian advances, or to rebuild in peacetime. Yet, the Trumpers and Russians proposed to seize it — with no input from European allies — to feather U.S. and Russian business nests.

As for Witkoff, he is so deep in Russia’s pocket that he was recently heard on a leaked tape tutoring a Russian negotiator on how to win over Trump.

Meantime, the president, indifferent to the public revelation of U.S.-Russian complicity, continues to send Witkoff on repeated trips to Moscow to negotiate with Putin. Witkoff has never once visited Ukraine.

The Journal lays out how Dmitriev dangled before Witkoff and Kushner visions of joint U.S.-Russian exploitation of Arctic mineral wealth, and a potential joint mission to Mars with SpaceX, along with multimillion-dollar rare earth deals.

The Russian money man played brilliantly on Trump’s misguided belief that business deals matter more than sovereignty and can paper over messy and dangerous political disputes — or invasions. Especially if U.S. investors get an inside piece of the action.

Never mind that this crass theory has already been proven false in Gaza, where Trump still can’t grasp that grandiose visions of prosperity won’t come true when underlying political grievances remain unsettled. Although the Israeli hostages were returned, the rest of Trump’s peace plan is near collapse.

As for the Ukraine plan, the idea that U.S. investments in Russia (or in Ukrainian rare earths) would prevent further military action is an ahistorical delusion. U.S. investments in both countries did not prevent Moscow from invading Ukraine in 2014 or 2022.

Putin’s goal is to subordinate Kyiv to Russian domination. If he can’t do it militarily, he will be happy to advance this goal via a peace plan he will surely violate, as he has done with every accord he has previously made with Ukraine. Trump’s dreams of billions in profits will also go down the drain as Putin pursues his dream of conquest.

POTUS and his real estate pals may think they are New York tough, but Moscow is not the Big Apple.

Russia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world (154th out of 180 countries, according to Transparency International). Bribery, seizure of huge sums, or nationalization are employed at will by Putin and his oligarch cronies.

Just consider the experience of William Browder, an American-born British citizen who built up the Heritage Fund into the largest foreign investment portfolio in Russia in the 1990s until he protested government corruption. The Kremlin expelled Browder in 2005 and attempted to assassinate him abroad.

When Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, challenged a Russian attempt to steal $230 million in taxes that the fund had already paid, his offices were raided. Magnitsky was arrested, tortured, and killed in prison in 2009.

I spoke with Browder by phone from London, and he had nothing but scorn for the ignorance of the Trump team. “Steve Witkoff and all his pals are not going to make a penny from the Russians,” he told me. “The Russians have a long history of enticing Americans and foreigners. They will defraud, arrest, cheat, and even murder you to prevent you from making a penny.

“They are masters of expropriation. Every foreign investor has been burned.”

The tragedy is that Trump, Witkoff and Kushner are willing to burn Ukraine in their quest for more wealth.

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