Steve Witkoff (R), accompanied by Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev (C) and Putin aide Yury Ushakov in Moscow, 25 April 2025. Photo: EPA / KRISTINA KORMILITSYNA
Senior Kremlin official Yury Ushakov has told Russian business daily Kommersant that some of the negotiations that led to last week’s US-Russian peace plan for Ukraine may have been conducted over WhatsApp.
“Yes, there are contacts via closed channels, where there are almost no leaks, unless some party specifically allows them. And then there are some conversations via WhatsApp, which, it seems, people can somehow listen in on,” Ushakov said in an interview published on Wednesday.
Though Ushakov stopped short of confirming that he had negotiated with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff via the messaging service, he did say that the leaked conversation between him and Witkoff published on Tuesday by Bloomberg could have been leaked by fellow White House staffers.
Bloomberg published the transcript of a private telephone conversation between Russian and American officials about the peace plan for Ukraine on Tuesday. In one of the conversations, dated to 14 October, Witkoff is heard giving Ushakov advice on how to frame the Kremlin’s proposals for a peace deal to Trump and appears to hint at the peace plan that later developed into the 28-point document.
Despite the leak, Trump announced on Truth Social on Tuesday that Witkoff would travel to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin on the plan, which has since been revised to 19 points, next week.
