Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s first friend and super-secretary of state, has a theory on how to end the war Russia started in Ukraine more than 11 years ago: Make everyone business partners.
That is the guiding principle behind Witkoff’s quiet diplomacy over recent months with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and President Vladimir Putin’s top negotiator on the war. In a revealing Wall Street Journal interview, Witkoff noted that “Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land.”
If only the Ukrainians and Russians would stop fighting and get down to making money, then peace would follow. Or so Witkoff seems to think. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
