A recording of a phone conversation between Trump envoy Witkoff and Putin’s aide Ushakov has been released. Witkoff gave Ushakov advice on how to win Trump’s favor and conduct successful negotiations with him.
“If we look at the content, there is nothing sensational. The interesting part is the chronology. They had agreed to have a phone call before the Zelensky-Trump meeting,” Sergey Melkonyan, a researcher at the APRI Armenia analytical center, told Radar Armenia.
According to the international affairs expert, the main purpose of the phone call was one: to organize Putin-Trump contact before the high-level US-Ukraine meeting.
“It is clear from Ushakov’s words that the main issue was organizing that conversation. This was a tactical step in the mechanics of negotiations,” he emphasized.
According to Melkonyan, a “war of compromising materials” is currently underway. The parties are trying to influence the negotiation process through information pressure. "Now they are trying to force Ukraine to accept the points that have already been negotiated and proposed by the United States in one way or another," he said.
According to the international expert, the publication of the Witkoff-Ushakov conversation will not have a big impact on the current negotiation processes, because no serious issues were discussed at all. "There is no talk of territories, the Ukrainian army, or NATO membership. If they wanted to, they could have recorded other conversations, but this is not that kind of thing," he emphasized.
