AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Let's take a moment to recap the last week of U.S. attempts to strike peace between Russia and Ukraine. The Trump administration developed a 28-point peace plan, credited largely to U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff. After it leaked, it was so widely seen as friendly to Russia that Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on social media to reject claims that Russia wrote the peace plan. Since then, U.S. officials have been making key revisions to the plan with Ukrainian and other European officials. All this has former U.S. diplomats wondering, how exactly are these talks being conducted? And so we thought we would talk to one of those former diplomats. Kurt Volker was the U.S. special representative for Ukraine under the first Trump administration. He joins us now. Welcome, Ambassador.
KURT VOLKER: Thank you. Great to be with you.
CHANG: So what stands out to you about the way the Trump administration has approached negotiations?
VOLKER: I'd say there's a bit of chaos in this and a little bit of rivalry within the administration, or so it seems. I think you have to take it all the way back to the Alaska summit, which was prepared by Steve Witkoff and an absolute failure. The idea was to have Putin come, welcome him, throw out the red carpet but get a ceasefire. Well, all of that had to be scrapped because Putin had no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire.
After that, of course, there were phone calls. Trump assigns Rubio - talk to Foreign Minister Lavrov. And Rubio does. Is told point-blank by Lavrov, same terms - we want everything and more. So Rubio reports that to Trump and the meeting in Budapest is canceled. Immediately after that, the Russians send Kirill Dmitriev to Florida to meet with Steve Witkoff 'cause they didn't like what they heard from Rubio. They wanted to talk to somebody else. And so Witkoff talks with them. They spent three days. They come up with this plan. But it is, of course, 100% the Russian demands.
CHANG: I want to touch on several things that you're bringing up here. First, what about the involvement of so many different officials? Like, I see U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is heading to Kyiv later this week. And then Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, plans to travel to Moscow next week. What do you make of their involvement in all these high-level talks?
VOLKER: Normally, if you involve a lot of your different senior officials, that can be a good thing. Unfortunately, in this case, it doesn't seem to be well-coordinated. You have the Witkoff plan, which was horrendous. And I think it was so bad that Donald Trump dispatches Rubio to go and clean it up, which he did. And all the reports now are that the U.S. and Ukraine and European allies are all on the same page on a reasonable plan, which is good. But then we're sending Witkoff back to Moscow.
CHANG: Right.
VOLKER: So are we still talking about the same plan, or is it the first one? Is it the new one? It's really very unclear. And you got to feel for Dan Driscoll because he is a former military guy, secretary of the Army.
CHANG: He is not a diplomat.
VOLKER: He's not a diplomat. And he's not a political leader in the same way that Rubio or the president would be. He's following orders (laughter). He's saying...
CHANG: Right. Can we talk about Rubio, too? Because he is supposed to be the top U.S. diplomat. He's secretary of State. What role do you see the State Department playing in all of this?
VOLKER: To be honest, I think we have to really talk about the Trump administration very differently than other administrations. There isn't really an administration. There is President Trump, who is the sole decider. And he's the leader. He makes the calls. But President Trump is very flexible and will go left one day, and right the next day, and left again the next day in order to try to navigate what he thinks will be a successful negotiation. So everybody else, in a way, is playing catch-up. That means that the role of the State Department is curtailed. The role of the secretary of State is curtailed...
CHANG: Right.
VOLKER: ...Compared to what we've seen in previous administrations.
CHANG: But could you argue, despite the visible chaos, could you argue that there is some merit to President Trump's approach? I say this because he often points to, like, the Israel-Hamas deal as a success for his administration. And he claims success in resolving a number of other wars this year. What do you make of his success?
VOLKER: Well, absolutely. Yes, I think President Trump deserves a lot of credit. We went through the entire Biden administration with the phrase, as long as it takes. But we couldn't define what it is. You know, is it strategic victory for Ukraine or a ceasefire or whatever? Just as long as it takes. That was an open-ended commitment of aid and taxpayer funds to Ukraine. President Trump has flipped that on its head. He has said the goal is to end the war. He wants peace. That is now what everybody is talking about. No one is talking about as long as it takes. Everyone's talking about ending the war.
CHANG: Ambassador Kurt Volker is a former U.S. special representative for Ukraine and a distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Thank you very much for joining us.
VOLKER: It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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