Ukraine Looks to Jared Kushner as Best Hope for a Favorable Peace Deal With Russia

Ukrainian officials are welcoming the growing involvement of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in negotiations for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, believing he will bring more diplomatic experience and sympathy for their cause to the process, Ukrainian media are reporting. Mr. Kushner, prime architect of the 2020 Abraham Accords, joined Mr. Trump’s all-purpose peace negotiator Steve Wikoff late last month for U.S.-Ukraine talks in Geneva and Florida before the pair traveled to Moscow on Tuesday to meet President Vladimir Putin of Russia.“The very fact that Trump added Kushner is a good sign,” the chairman of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, told the Kyiv Independent on Friday, adding that Mr. Kushner does not appear to be “under Putin’s spell.”The coming months figure to be a busy time for Mr. Kushner, who is with Mr. Witkoff in Miami for talks with Ukraine’s senior negotiator, Rustem Umerov, that began on Thursday and continued into the weekend, according to the White House.A separate report in the British newspaper, the Telegraph, said plans will be announced this month for Messrs. Kushner and Witkoff, along with Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, to take charge of the reconstruction and governance of the war-torn Gaza Strip.The Telegraph says unnamed Western officials have briefed reporters in America and Israel saying the three men will sit on an executive board for Gaza, which will be subordinate to a “board of peace” chaired by Mr. Trump.In Ukraine, officials have mixed feelings about the American negotiating team, believing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to be generally supportive but seeing Mr. Witkoff as too sympathetic to Moscow, according to the Independent.It was Mr. Witkoff who, together with a Putin aide, Kirill Dmitriev, cobbled together the 28-point peace plan that set off alarm bells in Ukraine and most of Western Europe by acceding to most of Moscow’s absolutist demands.Mr. Witkoff, a New York–based real estate developer with no diplomatic experience before helping negotiate the Gaza ceasefire, aroused further suspicions in Kyiv with the leak of an October 14 phone call in which he advised Mr. Putin’s senior foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, on how to influence Mr. Trump.The insertion of Mr. Kushner into the Ukraine talks means that Mr. Trump “doesn’t trust Witkoff anymore and wants someone closer to him … to effectively oversee Witkoff,” Mr. Merezhko told the Independent. The foreign affairs committee chairman added that Mr. Kushner “has more experience in diplomacy” than Mr. Witkoff.The newspaper quoted another “individual familiar with the matter” agreeing that Mr. Kushner’s involvement is seen as “rather positive” in Ukraine.That optimism is tempered by reports that officials in Moscow are also pleased to see Mr. Kushner becoming involved. Mr. Ushakov, is quoted as telling Russia 1’s prominent host and political interviewer, Pavel Zarubin, that Moscow expects Mr. Kushner to play a key role in any agreement that emerges from the talks.“In many ways, if some plan leading to a settlement is drawn up on paper, Mr. Kushner will be the one holding the pen in many ways,” Mr. Ushakov told the state-run broadcaster, according to Ukraine News Network.The Telegraph, meanwhile, reports that Mr. Trump expects to announce details of the second phase of the Gaza peace process, which sets out governance and security mechanisms, sometime before Christmas.The executive management board, headed by Messrs. Kushner, Witkoff and Blair, will oversee a committee of 12 to 15 Palestinian technocrats, none of whom will have ties to either Hamas or Fatah, the newspaper said.That board, in turn, will be subordinate to a “board of peace” chaired by Mr. Trump and including “heads of Arab and European countries, such as Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.”

Ukraine Looks to Jared Kushner as Best Hope for a Favorable Peace Deal With Russia

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