David E. Sanger

And so soon after the president returned from Israel,

Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, who the president had called in on this one again and who had played a central role in the Gaza negotiations, and Steve Witkoff, his envoy for everything, and J.D.

Vance, the vice president, and Marco Rubio, who's got two important titles here, secretary of state and national security advisor, all met together.

And basically, they argued to the president, hey, let's try with Ukraine and Russia.

exactly what we did in Gaza.

And the president gave them a green light in part because, Rachel, he didn't have any other options.

So they started with having a Russian representative, a Harvard Business School-educated head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, come to Miami and meet with Witkoff and with Jared Kushner and basically laid out Russia's concerns.

A lot of that was in the document.

And it wasn't until weeks later

that they began to sit and talk to the Ukrainians.

They never talked to the Europeans.

And then, of course, the document leaked.

And as soon as it did, it triggered that uproar.

The Europeans felt cut out by President Trump yet again.

The Ukrainians felt betrayed yet again.

And the Russians were celebrating because the early version of the document looked like their wishlist.

Well, you're certainly right, Rachel, that the Ukrainians came in and were consulted, but they came in very late.

It was only about a week before the actual document leaked out.

And so the version that we all saw last week really didn't reflect the Ukrainian point of view.

Now, there are two ways to interpret that.