Vladimir Putin greets Donald Trump’s envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, in the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia, December 2, 2025

EA-Times Radio VideoCast: Trump’s Epstein Problem; Ukraine’s European Lifeline

Saturday’s Coverage: 8+ Civilians Murdered, 27 Injured by Russia in Attacks on Odesa Region

UPDATE 0851 GMT:

Drawing from multiple sources, The Wall Street Journal has documented the Kremlin’s manipulation of Donald Trump’s envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff.

Days after Trump named Witkoff special envoy to the Middle East, Vladimir Putin sent a message through Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Putin was so interested in meeting Witkoff that the Kremlin might release US prisoner Marc Fogel to him. The invitation came from Putin’s top financial advisor Kirill Dmitriev, who had worked with the Trump camp since at least January 2017.

Putin set one condition: Witkoff had to come alone without any US officials, even an interpreter.

The Kremlin made the approach after studying psychological profiles of Trump officials. They included Keith Kellogg, the retired three-star general named US envoy to Russia and Ukraine. Russian intelligence emphasized that Kellogg’s daughter, Meaghan Mobbs, ran a charity in Ukraine. Kellogg had also shrugged off an appeal from former Fox TV host Tucker Carlson, who said before Trump’s inauguration that Moscow was ready to start talking.

Witkoff has declined multiple offers from the CIA for a briefing on Russia. The State Department assigned a small group of staffers to support Witkoff, but the envoy has not given summaries of his meetings to members or to others across the Trump administration. Former European allies have been left in the dark.

Meanwhile, the US has not had an Ambassador in Moscow since June. There is no Assistant Secretary for for European and Eurasian Affairs in the State Department.

White House spokesman Anna Kelly tried to defend the arrangement, “Perhaps in prior administrations you’d have a massively bureaucratic bloated process to get anything done. The President personally directs people he trusts, like Secretary Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff and others, to implement his foreign policy goals.”

But Boris Bondarev, a former senior Russian diplomat who fled shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, notes the risk of Trump and Witkoff in charge of talks with Moscow:

Trump thinks like a businessman, he thinks deals, but Putin thinks 100% the opposite. For Putin, the war is more than a worldly matter, it’s something sacred, something he must do, and that’s why he sees Trump as a very simple guy.

That assessment is reinforced by Witkoff’s conduct. His first chief of staff was a 28-year-old former Congressional aide, who told people he got the job because his family are friends with the Witkoffs. The envoy also travels with a staffer who previously worked for the investment fund of Silicon Valley billionaire and Trumpist kingmaker Peter Thiel.

Witkoff said, “We develop a thesis on how to be successful. So I don’t need to travel around with a zillion people.” He rarely visits the State Department.

UPDATE 0801 GMT:

Ukraine’s air defenses downed 75 of drones fired by Russia overnight. Nineteen UAVs hit eight locations.

UPDATE 0727 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to replace the head of the Southern Air Command, Dmytro Karpenko, amid Russian airstrikes on the Odesa region in southern Ukraine.

Russia’s incessant drone and missile attacks are murdering civilians and knocking out energy infrastructure, leaving tens of thousands of residents without power for days and cutting water supplies.

Zelensky told reporters on Saturday:

We are strengthening air defense, we will also strengthen, to be honest, the command. Today, I raised this issue regarding the replacement of the commander….I think they will find another candidate. Because we need to react in a timely manner, quickly.

On Friday, Russia’s attacks on the port of Pivdennyi killed at least eight people and injured 27 others. The day before, a woman was slain and her three children injured when a Russian drone struck their car.

“No matter how difficult it is for us, we need to protect as many people as possible, protect Odesa and our other regions as much as possible,” Zelensky said.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: US intelligence services are warning that Vladimir Putin wants to capture all of Ukraine and other parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet Union, “six sources familiar” with the assessment tell Reuters.

The reports, the most recent of which is from late September, challenge the claims of Donald Trump and members of his inner circle that Putin wants to end his 47-month full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who often repeated Kremlin lines before taking up her office this year, snapped on social media on Saturday at Reuters — and at NATO and Ukraine’s European partners:

You are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace effort, and fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

In his four-hour question-and-answer session on Friday, Putin repeated his demands for Ukraine’s capitulation with Russia’s seizure of more terrtiroy. He said “Kyiv regime” had come to power by means of a “coup d’état” and Russia was battling “neo-Nazism”.

A White House official refused to address the intelligence reports. They declared that “the President’s team has made tremendous progress with respect to ending the war” and repeated Trump’s assertion that a deal to end the invasion “is closer than ever before”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a two-hour press conference on Friday:

I don’t know if Putin wants to do a deal or Putin wants to take the whole country. These are things that he has said openly.

We know what they wanted to achieve initially when the war began. They haven’t achieved those objectives.

Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — who collaborated with the Kremlin’s top economic advisor Kirill Dmitriev on a 28-point ultimatum to Ukraine in late October — reportedly met separately with Dmitriev and with a high-level Ukrainian delegation in Miami on Saturday.

No further information has come out about any discussions.

Zelensky: “Peace is Better Than War, But Not at Any Cost”

On Saturday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Donald Trump to take an active role in negotiations to end the Russian invasion. He told reporters:

I believe such strength exists in the United States and in President Trump. And I believe we should not look for an alternative to the United States, because all alternatives are uncertain as to whether they can [succeed].

The President examined those alternatives:

Who else? Perhaps representatives of the Middle East. But I still believe the United States has greater chances.

Who else? Europe — the Coalition of the Willing — which is Europe plus our friends from Canada and Japan. But they will all be at the negotiating table in one way or another.

And perhaps China could as well, but we clearly see no desire from China to end this war.

The President repeated, “The most difficult issues were and remain Ukraine’s territories. Next is the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, our ZNPP. The third issue is money for reconstruction.”

An agreement is not just about signing a document. One must know the details: what will happen if the Russians come with aggression and launch another war. How will the Americans and Europeans respond? How will our partners respond? What deterrence package will Ukraine have? What will be present on Ukrainian territory? How will our army be equipped? How strong will it be, and what reserves will we have? What can we count on? What sanctions package will be imposed simultaneously on the aggressor?