Witkoff Is a Credulous Amateur. Ukraine Needs Him to Be Useful

If at times this year it seemed that Steve Witkoff, the US president’s Mr. Fix-it for pretty much everything, was much too close to the Kremlin, we now know why — thanks to a scoop from Bloomberg News. It’s because he was.

Any skilled mediator should aim to make sure both parties feel he or she has their backs. But what’s clear from the transcripts of leaked phone recordings my colleagues published Tuesday is that Witkoff has not been acting, in any sense, as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. He has instead been negotiating with his Russian counterparts to achieve what both sides want, at the expense of Ukraine and Europe.