Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff held a second round of talks — without Secretary of State Marco Rubio — with a top Ukrainian negotiator who previously led Witkoff to believe Kyiv was willing to accept a peace proposal highly favorable to Russia.
Witkoff, who will meet Kremlin officials in Moscow Tuesday, spoke with Secretary of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov after a sitdown involving full US and Ukrainian delegations a day earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Monday.
Witkoff previously met Umerov in Miami last month, at which time the two discussed a 28-point plan that would have seen Kyiv agree to several red-line measures, such as US recognition of some Ukrainian territory as Russian — including land Moscow has been unable to occupy over 11 years of war.
A revised 19-point plan developed by Ukraine and the US in Geneva last week walked back that point and left territorial matters for President Trump and Zelensky to work out.
The land issue was not discussed during Sunday’s full meeting, a source in the room told The Post.
However, territory was the subject of “difficult” and “intense” scaled-down talks involving Witkoff, Rubio and Jared Kushner on the US side and Ukraine’s military chief of staff Gen. Andrii Hnatov, deputy head of military intelligence Vadym Skibitskyi and Umerov, Axios reported Monday.
Witkoff and Umerov then held a one-on-one meeting, after which Umerov called Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president told reporters Monday that any further discussion on dividing up land must include the topic of security guarantees for his country once the fighting stops.
“Ukraine must know exactly when the war ends, then there will be security guarantees for the entire territory of Ukraine so that the invasion does not start again,” Zelensky said.
“This is the main thing and there can be no other interpretations, it is connected precisely with this.”
During the Miami meeting, Umerov led Witkoff to believe Kyiv would be willing to accept the “majority” of the 28-point plan, even suggesting a condition that would grant amnesty for well-documented Russian war crimes in Ukraine, a senior US official told The Post.
That point — which would also have granted amnesty to Ukrainian for any misdeeds involving US taxpayer-funded aid — was added in place of a condition initially proposed by Washington that would have had Kyiv “conduct a full audit of all aid received and create a legal mechanism to recover any errors found and punish those who illegally profiteered from the war,” the official said.
That official described Umerov’s suggested provision, which was rejected by the Ukrainian public once it became known, as “fishy,” while a second US official said the condition “was suggested as something that Russia would like.”
Umerov, who has since denied adding the provision, led the Ukrainian delegation at Sunday’s talks after Zelensky’s longtime chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned Friday following a raid on his home in connection with a corruption probe that has ensnared top officials in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s anti-graft watchdog spent 15 months digging into a brazen shakedown dubbed “Operation Midas,” uncovering a scheme that allegedly forced the country’s Energoatom contractors to cough up kickbacks — or risk getting blacklisted.
Investigators say the crooks skimmed nearly $100 million which could have instead gone toward rebuilding and protecting Ukrainian energy infrastructure damaged in Russian strikes.
Trump on Sunday suggested that the corruption ordeal was “not helpful” for US efforts to resolve the war.
The Ukrainian delegation left the US on Monday for Europe, where they will brief continental leaders.
