When, at the beginning of the week, I turned on the broadcast of the peace talks in Abu Dhabi, I immediately got a bad feeling. There they were, Donald Trump's two special envoys: sent to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine.
A duo that collects more air miles than Leonardo DiCaprio's character in "Catch me if you can", and tries to untangle Gordian knots in everything from nuclear weapons agreements with Iran to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The son-in-law and the friend. The investor and real estate magnate. The whole and the half. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
When the camera first zoomed in on Kushner, a tall and gaunt man was seen, his face fixed in a disgusted expression. When he talks, nothing moves except his mouth.
When he talks, nothing moves except his mouth.
Kushner is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka and what else qualifies him to broker peace is not entirely clear. Admittedly, he has proven to have some skills when it comes to charming politicians to usurp development deals.
A few years ago, he and his wife sat on a yacht in an Albanian lake, together with the country's prime minister, Edi Rama. They decided to build a luxury resort on a protected island. That was the spark that led to huge protests in Albania. Another project, to build a "Trump Tower" in Belgrade, had to be brought to an abrupt end after prosecutors began to dig into connections with a Serbian minister. Jared Kushner's company has also received its largest investment contributions from Saudi Arabia, and he is accused of having secretly received several billion dollars from the dictatorship - which could amount to bribery.
If the goal of the negotiations was to usurp the Trump family with lucrative deals in the event of a Putin-friendly peace, Kushner is the man to look for.
The camera pans over to Steve Witkoff. He is a couple of decades older and a decimeter shorter than his second envoy half but that is not what makes the difference so striking. He smiles with his eyes. The story goes like this: One night in New York, during the wild 80s, he offered Donald Trump a ham sandwich, and they've been friends ever since. The real estate billionaire's Witkoff has been in many difficult contractual situations, he does what it takes. Even if it's something as astonishingly shameless as calling Vladimir Putin a "humanitarian leader." One person who previously worked with Witkoff describes him as less hostile than others in Trump's circle: In a negotiation, Witkoff tries to figure out what the other side wants — "and tries to give it to them."
Certainly good when the goal is real estate construction. But when one's negotiating party wants to usurp an independent country's land and freedom? Not as good. In fact, downright terrifying.
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