The Wall Street Journal reports:

Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer and longtime golfing partner of Donald Trump, was just days into his job as the new president’s special envoy to the Middle East when he received a tantalizing message from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

Vladimir Putin was interested in meeting Witkoff—so interested that he might consider releasing an American prisoner to him. The invitation came from a Kremlin moneyman named Kirill Dmitriev, using the de facto Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as an intermediary.

There was just one thing: Witkoff would be expected to come alone, without any CIA handlers, diplomats or even an interpreter, a person familiar with the outreach said.

The Russian president had been studying psychological profiles of the officials around Trump, including Keith Kellogg, the retired three-star general Trump had named as America’s envoy to Russia and Ukraine. Putin’s intelligence-agency reports stressed that Kellogg’s daughter ran a charity in Ukraine—a red flag signaling he might be hostile to Russian demands during coming peace talks, people familiar with the documents said. Kellogg had also shrugged off an appeal from television personality Tucker Carlson, who told him before Inauguration Day that Moscow was ready to start talking.

Perhaps there was someone else in Trump’s inner circle who might make a better fit?

Ten months later, Kellogg is out and Witkoff and Dmitriev, two businessmen with strong personal connections to their respective presidents, are sketching a new economic and security order for Europe. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has pitched in to help negotiate where Russia’s borders will end, the shape of Ukraine’s army and how quickly Trump could tear down the new Iron Curtain of sanctions blockading Russia’s troubled economy.

It is hard to pinpoint a moment in history when businessmen have held such direct sway over matters of war and peace. Since the end of World War II, Washington’s relationship with Moscow was its most carefully calibrated, helmed by spy agencies who knew their rival intimately. Seasoned diplomats rehearsed rigid protocols to prevent misunderstandings between two nuclear powers poised like scorpions in a jar.

Today, those structures are virtually absent. America has had no ambassador in Moscow since June. There is no assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Witkoff has declined multiple offers from the CIA for a briefing on Russia. The State Department assigned a small group of staffers to support Witkoff, but members of that team, and others across the administration, have struggled to get summaries of Witkoff’s foreign meetings. Longtime allies in Europe also feel left in the dark, and worry that Washington no longer has their back, while Middle East monarchies are ascendant. [Continue reading…]