Has the White House lost interest in playing a role in the Ukraine peace talks? Seems that way. Or could they just be trying to get Moscow’s attention?
Last Wednesday, Jan. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that neither US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff nor President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would be participating.
Rubio did not provide an explanation, only that “[Russia and Ukraine] are going to follow up talks again this week. In that regard, bilateral. There might be a US presence, but it won’t be Steve and Jared.”
The announcement seemingly got the Kremlin’s attention. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev unexpectedly flew back to Miami on Saturday to meet with US officials.
According to a post on Witkoff’s X account: “Today in Florida, the Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev held productive and constructive meetings as part of the US mediation effort toward advancing a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian conflict. The American delegation included Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner, and White House Senior Advisor Josh Gruenbaum. We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine and is grateful for POTUS’s critical leadership in seeking a durable and lasting peace.”
Productive and constructive for whom? This is not a peace deal between Russia and the United States. Russia is at war with Ukraine.
But where was Ukraine? Where was Europe? Why would Russia need a one-on-one session with Team Trump before the next meeting?
Given Ukraine’s success, Trump may be losing interest in Russian oil.
Nonetheless, something changed. Witkoff is now heading back to the Middle East to participate in the trilateral meetings now rescheduled for Feb. 4 and 5 in Abu Dhabi.
Was yet another deal made or a return to an old one? Is it dawning on Russia that Team Trump might have just changed the rules of the game, with Russian oil no longer the trump card Putin believes it to be?
If so, that might explain why Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is pressing to get back to an agreement Moscow believes – or wants us to believe – that was already struck between Putin and Trump during the Alaska Summit last August.
If it was a deal – operative word being “was” – Ukraine rendered it moot. Kyiv refuses to stop resisting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals are not going to submit to Russia’s maximalist demands.
Putin needs the US to make that happen. His Army cannot cash the checks the Kremlin is writing. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Russian army has “advanced between 15 and 70 meters [50-230 feet] per day since early 2024, slower than many campaigns during the First World War,” while sustaining over 1,240,680 casualties.
Russia is losing soldiers on the battlefield now faster than they can replace them – upwards of 25,000 a month. For an army dependent upon mass, that is a huge red flag.
Ukraine continues to militarily expose Russia. Is it any wonder why Dmitriev darted off to Miami? Could this be about sweetening the pot to get the US to be more forceful with Ukraine and NATO?
Dmitriev is Putin’s money man – charged with creating “economic opportunities.” He dangles those opportunities before Team Trump, knowing that American companies have lost over $324 billion since leaving Russia after Putin invaded Ukraine.
Like his boss, Dmitriev subscribes to Sun Tzu – he knows Trump and Witkoff. Yet the clock is ticking. As the Kremlin’s resources – funds and soldiers – dwindle, time is quickly becoming Russia’s enemy.
Russian oil is Putin’s only remaining means to buy his depleted army and economy more time to complete his nearly four-year-old “special military operation” in Ukraine.
He tried that in Alaska last August. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the Trump-Putin summit, secret talks took place between Russia’s biggest state energy company and Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman to return to the “massive Sakhalin-1 project” if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process.
Sakhalin-1 was one of Exxon’s biggest investments. They had managed the venture since 1995, and owned 30% alongside state-owned Rosneft, and Japanese and Indian companies.
Recoverable reserves at Sakhalin-1 are estimated at 2.3 billion barrels of oil and 17.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
It was intended as a win-win scenario between Washington and Moscow. Only Ukraine got a vote, and they exercised that vote by striking oil refineries throughout Russia.
Given Ukraine’s success, Trump may be losing interest in Russian oil. Especially given the events of the past couple of weeks.
The White House may be moving on. American oil companies are back in Venezuela, and the US is defending Nigerian Christians from ISIS terrorists while keeping a pro-US government in place – possibly providing access to its oil reserves to American oil companies.
As we wrote in The Hill earlier this month, Gbenga Komolafe, chief executive officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, says that Nigeria’s crude oil and gas reserves have hit a record high of 37.24 billion barrels.
Cornering the oil market affords tremendous leverage.
And should the Iranian regime fall, Trump could exercise control over Iran’s vast oil reserves as well. US oil companies would likely welcome the prospect of regaining access to Iranian oil fields.
Iran is the sixth-largest oil producer in the world, producing roughly 3.2 million barrels of oil per day – roughly 4% of global crude production. And it sits on 209 billion barrels of oil in reserve, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. As CNN reported, “its daily production is less than half the 6.5 million barrels per day Iran produced in the mid-1970s before revolutionaries overthrew the Shah.”
Interesting. With one twist of the kaleidoscope – suddenly, it seems – Russia is pursuing US negotiators.
Cornering the oil market affords tremendous leverage. If that is Team Trump’s new overall strategy.
The White House’s 2025 National Security Strategy does emphasize this point: “We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the choke points through which they pass.”
Regime change in Iran – with a pro-Western-led government – is one way to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East. There is a lot to be said for the prospect of a Reza Pahlavi-led transitional government in Persia.
If the current Iranian government were to collapse, the naval threat posed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the Houthi threat to the Bab al-Mandab Strait – which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden – would be significantly diminished or eliminated.
Could this reality – a newly found leverage – be enough to get Russia to back off its maximalist demands?
Or do Dmitriev and Lavrov still believe Putin can buy his way out of this and achieve at the negotiating table what Russia cannot on the battlefields of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Zelensky announced on Telegram that “Ukraine is ready for substantive discussions.”
We will have to wait and see if Russia is as well. We doubt it.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Copyright 2026. Jonathan E. Sweet and Mark C. Toth. All rights reserved.