Anne Applebaum

And then actually it turns into a novel about what actually can we ever know about the past?

When we study history, when we think about people's motives, what's the real story?

We don't really know.

And sometimes I'm a historian when I'm not being a journalist, and I found it really thought-provoking.

It's not hard to read.

It has a science fiction-y kind of air, yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm in the offices of the Atlantic Monthly magazine in Washington, D.C., which is a rare occasion, actually.

So the negotiations are a somewhat strange product of a series of conversations that Steve Witkoff and maybe others have been having with a guy called Kirill Dmitriev, who's the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund over the last several weeks and months, actually.

And remembering that neither Steve Witkoff nor Kirill Dmitriev has as their main goal

the conclusion of the war and the preservation of the sovereignty of Ukraine and the defense of Europe and a secure future for Europe and for Ukraine, they seem to have as their main goal the creation of a possible new set of American and Russian business deals.

And we know this both because of reporting, really quite amazing reporting in The Wall Street Journal, as well as a few months ago in The Financial Times.

We know this because the original version of a peace deal that they presented had a whole long list of

plans, American-Russian plans, including looking for minerals in the Arctic and, you know, oil and gas infrastructure and maybe the use of some frozen Russian assets that are in European banks by Americans to develop Russia.

So that seems to be their primary interest and

And they came up with this 28-point peace plan that was completely unacceptable either to the Ukrainians or to the Europeans.

It was somehow then modified.

Secretary Rubio got involved, modified, changed.

There's another version of it, which we haven't seen yet, that Steve Witkoff is supposedly taking to Moscow.

I mean, really, as we're speaking, as we're having this conversation, he's there.