[kellyhound]

Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine.

But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks.

They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.

At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”

Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine.

U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials.

By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.

Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, had found receptive partners in Witkoff—Trump’s longtime golfing partner—and Kushner, whose investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate.

The two businessmen shared President Trump’s long-held approach to geopolitics. If generations of diplomats viewed the post-Soviet challenges of Eastern Europe as a Gordian knot to be painstakingly unraveled, the president envisioned an easy fix: The borders matter less than the business.

In the 1980s, he had offered to personally negotiate a swift end to the Cold War while building what he told Soviet diplomats would be a Trump Tower across the treet from the Kremlin, with their Communist regime as a business partner.

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal, describing at length his hopes that Russia, Ukraine and America would all become business partners.

“If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

When a version of the 28-point plan leaked earlier this month, it drew immediate protests.

Leaders in Europe and Ukraine complained it reflected mostly Russian talking points and bulldozed through nearly all of Kyiv’s red lines.

They weren’t assuaged even after administration officials assured them that the plan wasn’t set in stone, worried that Russia—after violently redrawing European borders—was being rewarded with commercial opportunities.

As Western leaders convened this week to digest the plan, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk offered a pithy summary: “We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.”

For many in the Trump White House, that blurring of business and geopolitics is a feature, not a bug.

Key presidential advisers see an opportunity for American investors to snap up lucrative deals in a new postwar Russia and become the commercial guarantors of peace.

In conversations with Witkoff and Kushner, Russia has been clear it would prefer U.S. businesses to step in, not rivals from European states whose leaders have “talked a lot of trash” about the peace effforts, one of these people said: “It’s Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ to say, ‘Look, I’m settling this thing and there’s huge economic benefits for doing that for America, right?’”

A question for history will be whether Putin entertained this approach in the interest of ending the war, or as a ploy to pacify the U.S. while prolonging a conflict he believes is his place in history to slowly, ineluctably win.

One sign that he may be serious is that some of his most-trusted friends, sanctioned billionaires from his St. Petersburg hometown—Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, Boris and Arkady—have sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals, according to people familiar with the meetings and European security officials.

That includes reviving the giant Nord Stream pipeline, sabotaged by Ukrainian tactical divers, and under European Union sanctions.

Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil met with Russia’s biggest state energy company, Rosneft, to discuss returning to the massive Sakhalin gas project if Moscow and Washington gave the green light.

Elsewhere, a cast of businessmen close to the Trump administration have been looking to position themselves as new economic links between the U.S. and Russia.

Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions.

Another Trump donor, Stephen P. Lynch, paid $600,000 this year to a lobbyist close to Trump Jr. who is helping him seek a Treasury Department license to buy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from a Russian state-owned company.

There is no evidence that Witkoff, the White House or Kushner are briefed on these efforts or coordinating them.

A person familiar with Witkoff’s thinking said the envoy is confident that any settlement with Russia would benefit America broadly, not just a handful of investors.

Witkoff, who hasn’t traveled to Ukraine this year, is set to visit Russia for the sixth time next week and will again meet Putin.

He insisted he isn’t playing favorites. “Ukrainians have fought heroically for their independence,” said Witkoff, who has tried to inspire Ukrainian officials with the idea of soldiers disarming to earn Silicon Valley-scale salaries operating American built AI data centers. “It is now time to consolidate what they have achieved through diplomacy,” he said.

“The Trump administration has gathered input from both the Ukrainians and Russians to formulate a peace deal that can stop the killing and bring this war to a close,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly.

“As the President said, his national security team has made great progress over the past week, and the agreement will continue to be fine-tuned following conversations with officials from both sides.”

An administration official said that Kushner and Witkoff also met with Ukraine’s national security adviser, Rustem Umerov, in Miami and spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The official said that while Trump has “done a lot of new, important things regarding economic incentives,” he and his team have also been focused on “geopolitical and military realities.”

As Witkoff pursued talks with Dmitriev over nine months, some agencies inside the Trump administration had a limited view of his dealings with Moscow.

In the lead-up to an August summit in Alaska between Trump and Putin, Witkoff and Dmitriev discussed a prisoner exchange that would have been the largest bilateral swap in their countries’ history.

The Central Intelligence Agency, which traditionally manages prisoner trades with Russia, wasn’t fully briefed on that proposed exchange. Nor was the State Department’s office for unjustly imprisoned Americans.

The CIA didn’t return requests for comment. The State Department referred questions to the White House.

Career officials in the office overseeing sanctions at the Treasury Department have at times learned details of Witkoff’s meetings with Moscow from their British counterparts.

In the days after Alaska, a European intelligence agency distributed a hard-copy report in a manila envelope to some of the continent’s most senior national security officials, who were shocked by the contents: Inside were details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic.

Witkoff has worked closely with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, has been all but frozen out of serious talks, and last week said he is leaving the government.

To understand the story behind the administration’s Russia negotiations, The Wall Street Journal spoke to dozens of officials, diplomats, and former and current intelligence officers from the U.S., Russia and Europe, and American lobbyists and investors close to the administration.

The picture that emerges is a remarkable story of business leaders working outside the traditional lines of diplomacy to cement a peace agreement with business deals.

Witkoff was just weeks into his new job as President Trump’s Russia and Ukraine negotiator when his office asked the Treasury Department for help allowing a sanctioned Russian businessman to visit Washington.

Kirill Dmitriev, an investment banker with degrees from Harvard and Stanford, spoke Witkoff’s preferred language: business. He had invited Witkoff to Moscow in February and escorted him into a three-hour meeting with Putin to discuss the Ukraine war.

But Dmitriev was persona non grata in the U.S, blocked by the Treasury in 2022 for his role leading his country’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which it called a “slush fund for Vladimir Putin.”

Trump had told Witkoff he wanted the war to end and the administration was willing to take the risk of welcoming Putin’s emissary to Washington.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had questions about the unique request, but ultimately signed off.

Dmitriev arrived at the White House on April 2 and presented a list of multibillion-dollar business projects the two governments could pursue together.

At one point, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Dmitriev that Putin needed to demonstrate he was serious about peace.

But Dmitriev felt his businesslike rapport was breaking through. “We can transition investment trust into a political role,” he said in an unpublished interview that month.

In April, Dmitriev welcomed Witkoff to the St. Petersburg presidential library for another three-hour meeting with Putin.

Witkoff took his own notes, relying on a Kremlin translator, then briefed the White House from the U.S. Embassy.

That same month, European national security advisers planned to meet Witkoff in London to integrate him into their peace process but he was busy with his other portfolio—negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza—and couldn’t make it.

Afterward, one European official asked Witkoff to start speaking with allies over the secure fixed line Europe’s heads of state use to conduct sensitive diplomatic conversations.

Witkoff demurred, as he traveled too much to use the cumbersome system.

Dmitriev and Witkoff meanwhile were chatting regularly by phone about increasingly ambitious proposals.

The U.S. and Russia were discussing major agreements on oil-and-gas exploration and Arctic transportation, Dmitriev told the Journal.

“We believe that the U.S. and Russia can cooperate basically on everything in the Arctic,” he said. “If a solution is found in Ukraine, U.S. economic cooperation can be a foundation for our relationship going forward.”

American and Russian business leaders were quietly anticipating that Witkoff and Dmitriev would deliver, positioning their companies to profit from peace.

In secret talks, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Neil Chapman met Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, Putin’s former private secretary, in the Qatari capital Doha, to discuss Exxon’s return to the massive Sakhalin project, an investment stranded after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Exxon, billionaire investor Todd Boehly and others have explored buying assets owned by Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer.

The U.S. sanctioned Lukoil in October to increase pressure on Moscow, prompting the company to put its overseas assets up for sale. Elliott Investment Management eyed buying a stake in a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas into Europe.

More recently, Kremlin-linked businessmen Timchenko, Kovalchuk and the Rotenbergs have been offering U.S. counterparts gas concessions in the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as potentially four other locations, according to a European security official and a person familiar with the talks.

Russia has also mentioned rare-earth mining opportunities near the massive nickel mines of Norilsk and in as many as six other Siberian locations that are still unexploited, these people said.

Beach, Trump Jr.’s college friend, was in talks to acquire 9.9% of an Arctic LNG project with Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer—which is partly owned by Timchenko—if the U.S. and U.K. remove sanctions on it, according to drafts of contracts reviewed by the Journal.

In a statement, Beach said that partnering with Novatek would “strongly benefit any company committed to advancing American energy leadership,” and that his company, America First Global, “actively seeks investment opportunities that strengthen American interests around the world.”

He said he “has never worked with Steve Witkoff” but is “extremely grateful” for the efforts Witkoff and others are making to end the war in Ukraine. Trump Jr. has told people he isn’t doing business with Beach.

Meanwhile, Lynch, the Miami-based investor, had been asking the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it came up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding.

Lynch, who in 2022 was given a license by Treasury to complete the acquisition of the Swiss subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank, had been seeking a license for the pipeline since the Biden administration, but in April dialed up his lobbying efforts by hiring Ches McDowell, a friend of Trump Jr.

He would pay McDowell’s firm $600,000 over the next six months. Lynch’s representatives reached out to Witkoff for a meeting.

In late July, Dmitry Bakanov, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, visited NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston—the first such visit since 2018—as well as the spacecraft manufacturing facilities of Boeing and SpaceX.

The chess pieces were moving into position. But all of it hung, to some degree, on whether Witkoff could unlock the conflict his boss had pledged during his campaign to resolve in a single day.

On Aug. 6, Witkoff flew to Moscow, at Putin’s invitation, for a meeting prepared only a few days in advance.

Dmitriev walked him through Zaryadye Park overlooking the Moskva River, then escorted him to the Kremlin for another three-hour session with Russia’s leader.

Putin mentioned wanting to meet with Trump personally. He gave Witkoff a medal, the Order of Lenin, to pass to a CIA deputy director whose mentally unwell son was killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

The next day, Witkoff dialed into a videoconference with officials and heads of state from top European allies, and explained the outlines of what he understood to be Putin’s offer.

If Ukraine would surrender the remaining roughly 20% of Donetsk province that Russia had failed to conquer, Moscow would forfeit its claim to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces.

The European officials were confused. Did Putin mean he would withdraw his troops from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as Witkoff was suggesting? Or, more likely, was Putin merely promising to not conquer the thousands of square miles of those two provinces that, after years of bloody fighting, remained in Ukrainian hands?

Either way, Ukraine was skeptical about the value of a promise from Putin.

On Aug. 9, Witkoff retreated to the Spanish island of Ibiza. European leaders were still seeking clarity from him, the White House, and the State Department, on what exactly Putin had offered.

Witkoff wanted to strike while the iron was hot and hold a summit without delay. Dmitriev was optimistic Witkoff had taken Russia’s sensitivities on board: “We believe Steve Witkoff and the Trump team are doing a great job to understand the Russian position to end the conflict,” he told the Journal, a few days before.

The Aug. 15 summit fell apart almost as soon as it began. Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump arrived on Air Force One, meeting Putin, his longtime adviser Yuri Ushakov, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Putin launched into a 1,000-year history lecture on the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people. The two sides canceled a lunch and an afternoon session where they were meant to check through their other issues, like the exchange of prisoners.

Witkoff left uncertain where things stood, but hopeful talks would accelerate soon. “Everyone was working hard, but it was positive,” he said.

In October, President Zelensky flew to Washington, hoping to secure long-range, U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. His military wanted to cripple Russian refineries, pushing Moscow to negotiate on better terms.

By the time Zelensky arrived, Trump had spoken to Putin a day earlier and decided not to offer the Tomahawks.

Instead, Witkoff encouraged Ukrainian officials to try another tack: What good was a handful of missiles going to accomplish? Instead, he encouraged Ukraine to ask Trump for a 10-year tariff exemption. It would supercharge their economy, he said.

“I’m in the deal settlement business. That’s why I’m here,” he told.

[kellyhound]

The 37th Marine Brigade captured 19 occupiers during the clearing of Ivanivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Also, as a result of search and strike actions, another 53 russians were killed.

[kellyhound]

Ukrainian forces destroyed 20 fuel tanks — 70% of the total — in a drone strike on Russia's Temryuk Seaport in Krasnodar Krai on Dec. 5, the General Staff reported Dec. 8.

The Dec. 5 attack sparked a large fire at the Temryuk Seaport, a facility that handles various types of cargo, including liquefied natural gas used to supply the Russian military.

The Krasnodar Krai Operational Headquarters confirmed that the port sustained damage from the drone strikes.

The fire continues to burn at the liquefied gas loading rack, where roughly two dozen rail tanks are stationed. As of the evening of Dec. 7, the fire had spread across nearly 1,000 square meters, according to the General Staff.

Ukrainian forces targeted multiple sites in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories overnight on Dec. 8, the General Staff added.

Strikes hit an ammunition depot near the village of Chmyrivka in Luhansk Oblast and a drone depot in the city of Donetsk in Donetsk Oblast.

Ukrainian forces also struck a fuel and lubricants depot near the Simeykine settlement in Luhansk Oblast, as well as a mobile fire group and a Pantsir-S1 air defense system in Donetsk Oblast.

The consequences of the strikes and the full extent of the damage are still being assessed, according to the report.


Meanwhile: Power was out for roughly half of residents in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Tuesday after the latest Russian attacks on the country's energy system, the energy ministry said.
"The situation in Kyiv remains one of the most difficult – currently, up to 50% of consumers in the capital are without electricity," the ministry said.

[houseoftechno]

Taiwan is reportedly receiving technology transfer from Israel for T-Dome defenses from China missile attacks.

[kellyhound]

Rostov, as a result of a drone attack, the oil terminal and the oil tanker "Valery Gorchakov" were damaged. Two crew members were killed, and three others were injured.

According to media reports, the tanker in question is the "Valery Gorchakov".

The ship was built in 1969 as a cargo ship. In 2004, it was converted from a cargo ship to an oil tanker.

In addition, explosions occurred in Bataysk, and part of the city was left without electricity.

[kellyhound]

The FP-5 "Flamingo" is a Ukrainian ground-launched cruise missile developed by defence firm Fire Point.

Revealed on 18 August 2025, the missile is fitted with a 1,150 kg (2,540 lb) warhead and has a range of 3,000 km (1,900 miles).

The missile, similar in appearance to the Milanion Group FP-5 cruise missile, is in serial production, targeting 210 units a month.

[kellyhound]

Moscow. General Fanil Sarvarov serves as head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces and took part in the war in Ukraine.

A powerful explosion occurred in the courtyard of a residential building at around 7 a.m. According to investigators, an improvised explosive device was planted under the chassis of a Kia Sorento and detonated a few seconds after the vehicle started moving.

The 56-year-old driver is in extremely critical condition, having suffered multiple fractures and shrapnel wounds.

[Guns N' Coffee]

Update: He died from his injuries.

A Russian general has been killed in a car bombing in Moscow, officials have said.

Russia's Investigative Committee said Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov died on Monday morning after an explosive device planted under a car detonated.

Sarvarov, 56, was the head of the armed forces' operational training department, the committee added.

[kellyhound]

Traitors could have passed information to the enemy about the place of residence and work schedule of Lieutenant General of the Russian Army Fanil Sarvarov, who died in a terrorist attack.

Retired FSB Major General Alexander Mikhailov stated that it is necessary to search not only for the perpetrators of this terrorist attack, but also for the "moles" who are accessing the personal data of high-ranking Russian military personnel.

Our intelligence agencies are working nonstop right now, and yet the enemy is still managing to inflict very painful blows on us. How do they do it?

Now here's the most important part. Since this isn't the first high-profile assassination attempt on senior Defense Ministry officers, I'm deeply convinced that we need to look for moles within government structures.

Without a work schedule, it's also unlikely that such an attack could be carried out. Therefore, we need to look for the moles who are somehow facilitating the supply of information about our senior officers to the enemy.

Lately, we've been blaming newcomers, people who do things for money. You know, we have a lot of our own creatures, and the black sheep that spoil the whole flock are present in this area too. So, we need to look into this matter very carefully.

Could Great Britain have supervised this terrorist attack?

"Now they're starting to talk again about Britain's involvement. Ukrainian intelligence services themselves, even without Britain, have crossed all possible and acceptable red lines. They've embarked on a path of murder and terror on Russian soil."

Of course, they're carrying out a broadly political mission, but I don't think they report every incident related to the assassination plot to Zelenskyy.

Therefore, a roadmap has been developed, so to speak, and the Ukrainian special services are now operating without Zelenskyy, and they don't need to turn to him for every sneeze. The goal has been set: to inflict the greatest possible damage on the Russian Federation, primarily the Russian Armed Forces.

Of course, we can assume that the British intelligence services are somehow involved. But the Ukrainian intelligence services themselves are quite effective in terms of assassinations, sabotage, and terrorism.

You said we need to look for the mole. Where exactly? It's like looking for a needle in a haystack...

I won't name specific structures right now, so as not to cast a shadow on them. But we need to look for a mole where personal data of senior Defense Ministry officials is stored.

The fact remains: someone is quite successful in providing information on certain individuals, because to carry out any terrorist attack, it's necessary to thoroughly study the person, their schedule, and the conditions in which they exist, and from this, determine the location of the crime.

According to preliminary investigation data, the tragedy occurred around seven o'clock in the morning. The 56-year-old general, as usual, got into his Kia Sorento and started driving.

At that moment, a powerful improvised explosive device detonated under the driver's seat. The force of the explosion was such that the car was completely destroyed, trapping the driver and suffering multiple shrapnel wounds.

(Other sources mention it was a magnetic mine and detonated when he hit the brakes)

"They pulled the man out with difficulty; he was trapped in the car," sources from the scene reported. The general's wife, who was nearby, became an unwitting witness.

Despite the efforts of medics, who, according to eyewitnesses, even performed resuscitation on the spot, Fanil Sarvarov could not be saved.

[kellyhound]

Ukrainian forces mined a building they had previously evacuated and later remotely detonated it after russian troops occupied the structure.