Anne Applebaum

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.

What's disturbing about this episode is that it shows something very ugly about this administration, namely,

And it raises a question.

In whose name are they conducting American foreign policy?

Is this for the security and prosperity of America and our allies?

Or is this something that's happening on behalf of companies, maybe even some involving the family of Trump or of Witkoff?

who are hoping to make money out of this negotiation.

That's where we are right now.