Hot on the heels of Axios.

Hot on the heels of Axios.

Right away: of course, everyone is worried about intelligence data, so, the Americans deny that Ukraine was threatened with having intelligence cut off. That still does not mean it will not be cut off, but as of now nothing has happened yet.

Now in order.

▪️During eight hours of talks in Miami, Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainian delegation that Trump was going to speak with Putin and lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports.

▪️Trump wanted Ukraine to unilaterally stop attacking Russian refineries because this (supposedly) affects diesel prices in the United States, according to a U.S. official.

▪️Zelensky said he was ready to stop the strikes if Russia stopped strikes on Ukrainian power plants.

▪️In the end, Trump decided to make a diesel deal with Putin after Zelensky ignored Trump’s requests half a dozen times.

▪️A Ukrainian official said that during the talks Witkoff and Kushner threatened that Trump would cut off intelligence for Ukraine if it continued to ignore his requests.

▪️A U.S. official denied such threats and said that Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainians that the U.S. is a strong partner that provides ammunition and intelligence, and therefore Ukraine should not take actions that harm American consumers.

"Attacks on refineries hurt Russia, but they hurt the U.S. too," the U.S. official said.

▪️After the talks in Miami, a new crisis broke out over the diesel deal. (Radio Liberty insider Alex Raufoglu writes that the talks were cut short and there will be no second day of negotiations).

▪️Witkoff and Kushner had apparently been planning to travel to Moscow and Kyiv next week to discuss peace proposals, but it is now unclear how yesterday’s scandal will affect their plans.

▪️A U.S. official said that Putin is hammering Ukraine mercilessly, but they think he is open to a discussion about ending the war. The U.S. wants to give him a new proposal good enough for him to stop.

▪️There is a problem with this, Axios notes: commenting yesterday on the Trump-Putin call, Ushakov said that Ukraine had supposedly derailed the talks with strikes on Russia during the elections, and now "we will think about when these talks can be resumed."

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Bottom line.

1. The suffering American administration is trying to save its own ass because of high diesel prices.

2. Naturally, Ukraine turned out to be to blame for this.

3. Since the current administration has no moral guardrails whatsoever, it is making a deal with Putin.

4. Trump’s deal with Putin is not as frightening (the volumes are not that big) as the consequences of yet another diplomatic conflict with the U.S.

5. I am not worried at all about how this will affect the "negotiation process" with Russia. From Russia’s side, negotiations have always been a simulation, and "Putin’s openness to talks" is just voices in the heads of Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner.

6. Intelligence has not been restricted so far, and the U.S. official denies that such threats were made. We will watch the facts as they come.

That is where things stand for now.