Hard Cop, Soft Cop, Empty Hands: Washington Runs Out of Ukraine Leverage

Introduction

Recorded September 8, 2026, two days after the Kremlin confirmed Putin's three-hours-ten-minutes meeting with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their onward leg to Kyiv, this Duran episode is a ledger of a week that failed twice. First the stick: CIA Director Ratcliffe went to Moscow to play the hard man and was refused by Putin and Lavrov. Then the carrot: the sanctions czar, the glittering business opportunities, the sanctions-after-peace promise delivered at the G20 — and the Russians didn't move. What's left is the meeting Washington keeps proposing and Moscow keeps refusing, a front the hosts read as collapsing everywhere, and the closing fact-check of an ISW claim — against which ISW's own September 2 assessment, pinned here by direct fetch, says Putin has issued "no fewer than 15 separate deadlines." The dispute is live; both records are on the page.

A Movie-Promotional Press Tour

Alex Christoforou opened by laying out the week's itinerary: "let's discuss the diplomacy between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine" — Witkoff and Kushner in Moscow meeting Putin, Dmitriev received as well, and the Trump administration's "sanctions czar" in Moscow though not in the room. Then the Kyiv leg — and the register drops. The Kushner-Witkoff-Zelensky meeting was, in his words, a complete clown show: "Zelensky turned it into a media spectacle, a media event", the three of them taking reporters' questions — "it felt like a movie promotional press tour." "It didn't look like a negotiation to end a devastating, catastrophic conflict."

And the theatre had lines. Zelensky "flat out said in front of Witkoff and Kushner that there's going to be no compromises" — that was his position; "Ukraine's not going to leave Donbas"; there would be "no withdrawal from Donbas"; and, to the cameras: "I'm waiting for more Patriots. Give me money. Give me weapons." That, Christoforou noted, was the Kyiv statement of record during these talks.

It Wasn't Diplomacy — and the Summer Explains the Rush

Mercouris's verdict on the whole trip: "It wasn't diplomacy at all." If you wanted diplomacy, "you don't send Witkoff and Kushner to Moscow to conduct diplomacy" — they are friends of the president, and "they really are not up to the game of diplomacy", as they have repeatedly shown in this war and in the Middle East. "Diplomacy is a skilled, complex operation" — discretion, care, attention to detail; "you move forward by taking small steps." None of which this was.

What forces the pace is the battlefield. "The situation in Ukraine is terrible": "the Black Sea coast is now cut off", Ukraine is landlocked, its economy imploding, out of air defenses, pounded day and night while the Russian army is "advancing everywhere and purposefully." ISW's own September 2 assessment, verified here by direct fetch, places Russian forces one-and-a-half to four kilometers from the outskirts of Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and southern Druzhkivka — while sizing total August gains at 90.35 km² against Putin's claimed 270 km² (advancing: yes; the maximalist magnitude: contested even between the Kremlin and ISW's own map). Donbas, on the episode's reading, is incredibly difficult — the transcript's "unlikely to fall within a few weeks, months" retained with its hedge — "some say by January, February of 2027." The hosts' crosstalk puts the year's bill at "about 60 billion by the end of the year" — "that's just for 2026" — unattributed color, but the register is the point: everything is falling apart fast.

Hence the American motive: the United States "does not want a massive debacle in Europe" on its hands — not the administration, not Trump — "so they are trying to find some means to get the Russians to stop."

Hard Cop, Soft Cop — Both Rejected

The stick came first. "They sent CIA Director Ratcliffe to Moscow" — and the more we learn of that trip, the clearer its purpose: "he played the hard man", threatening that "the situation for you is going to get much worse unless you do a deal with us now and stop the war now." "And that didn't work. On the contrary, it appears to have backfired": Putin and Lavrov refused to meet Ratcliffe, and, per the US-media reports the episode relays, the Russians reacted badly to the threats and escalated the war as soon as he left.

Then the carrot: "you then send in the soft cop with the promises and the gifts and the bribes" — the sanctions czar brought along, "the glittering business opportunities" if the Russians end the war, Bessent telling Russian finance minister Siluanov so at the G20: ceasefire, buffer zone in Donbas, and then the sanctions are lifted. "That's the fairy tale they tell the Russians."

The answer was demonstrated rather than stated. "The Russians didn't move. Putin was immensely polite" — which, Mercouris notes, irritates many people in Russia, where criticism of Dmitriev is starting to appear in the Russian media itself, not seen before. "Just as the Russians rejected the threats, so they rejected the bribes": missile and drone strikes continued while the envoys sat in Moscow, some "very close to the airport, the Boryspil airport"; no direct flight to Kyiv was made possible — Witkoff and Kushner had to travel to Warsaw and take the train — where they "were put through this circus by Zelensky because of course they came empty-handed."

Bishkek Says No; Washington Has Nothing Else

Where does it go from here? Washington "is trying very hard to get this trilateral meeting set up" as part of a ceasefire deal — but "Putin has repeatedly rejected that idea." The latest refusal: at a press conference in Bishkek, Putin said straightforwardly — these people want personal meetings, "and they're threatening us with terrorism at one and the same time. So that isn't going to go anywhere." (Ratcliffe, Mercouris adds, had come to Moscow suggesting a trilateral summit meeting — "reported at the time", though not certainly.)

The diagnosis underneath: the Americans haven't given up — "but the Russians aren't going to stop" — and the administration "really has nothing else": more money for Zelensky is politically toxic, and "the US doesn't have weapons to give Zelensky either."

And one misread to watch. Putin "was immensely polite as he always is" — perhaps more than usual — and extended good wishes to Trump (the Kremlin record corroborates both: the published opening asks the envoys to convey "best wishes and words of gratitude" to Trump, and Ushakov says Putin "conveyed his best wishes to President Donald Trump"). "The Americans will misunderstand that", Mercouris warns — nice in public, so maybe we can push a little further — "but realistically, that's not going to happen." As for the rest of the West: "Europeans nowhere to be seen" — are they "completely cut out of this entire project"?

Two Fatal Problems — and Three Hours of Explaining the Front

What does Trump think a meeting produces? Christoforou: does he expect them to sit across a table and agree "to whatever terms Trump dictates" — a deal "formed within 5 or 10 minutes just because he's present in the room"? "Yeah, but I think he probably does actually", Mercouris says. From the Russian point of view, "firstly it legitimizes Zelensky" — Putin and Trump are both legitimate presidents, so seating Zelensky alongside means he is "accepted by the Russians as a legitimate party" — one reason they will never agree. Secondly, it manufactures a squeeze: Trump and Zelensky meeting Putin together, demanding this ceasefire — some mechanism to make the Russians stop. "And the Russians won't stop." Beyond that, Washington is "enlisting Russian BRICS partners" — Modi, Tokayev, Lula — to press Putin too.

And what the Moscow meeting actually was, on the episode's reading of the Kremlin website: Putin's introductory words — "'We're advancing all across the front line. And we are going to win'". A verification note is owed here: the published September 5 transcript of those introductory words contains no such sentence — zero occurrences of "advancing" or "front" anywhere in the text (the verbatim attribution is contradicted by the cited page); the substance does appear in the record, but in Ushakov's September 6 comment — "the Russian side highlighted the significant advances made by the Russian armed forces in the combat zone, expressed confidence that the set objectives would be achieved" (content confirmed; placement in the introductory words not). Ushakov, in the summary he provided of the meeting, gave the impression that most of it was taken up with "the Russians" — his word, not just Putin — suggesting military people in the room, walking the Americans through the front.

Over the heads of two men who "don't know Kramatorsk from Sloviansk" and "have no idea where Dobropillya is" — "Ratcliffe would know about these places, but Witkoff and Kushner almost certainly don't." The format: the room first, then "an informal dinner, possibly sandwiches" — no serious business in that setting — so although the meeting "took up 3 hours and 10 minutes" (Ushakov's comment nails the number — "three hours and ten minutes, to be precise" — along with the dinner and the front-line briefing), "the substantive part of it would have been shorter than that". Christoforou's jab closes it: "They've been doing that through eight meetings with Witkoff" ("this was their eighth visit to our country", Ushakov confirms) — "and they're still not understanding it."

Terrible in Every Single Place

The front-line rundown, on the hosts' reading of the reports: "Terrible in every single place." The Russians are storming a village "confusingly also called Dobropillia", southwest of the town; if it falls, "Dobropillia is encircled. It is in a cauldron" — no access roads, no communications — which "opens the way for an encirclement of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk from the south." Several settlements between Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka and Druzhkivka, south of Kramatorsk, have just been captured. There is "another encirclement of Ukrainian troops in northeastern Kharkiv region" — "an encirclement which should never have been allowed to happen" — and Orekhov, in effect encircled and about to fall. "It is a crisis right across the battlefronts." The hosts' source here is "report confirmation" they say they have; the primary reporting was not pinned this round — hold the specifics accordingly.

The stakes: Witkoff and Kushner "probably also believe, continue to believe, the story that you have all across the media in the west, that the front lines are in stalemate, when they are far from being so." By the time they understand, "it will be too late. Donbass will fall." People in the Pentagon understand it — which is why the envoys came to Moscow "with all the bribes that came with them."

Folded in, the Zelensky read: "Zelensky is preparing his exit in the next 6 months to a year" — his weapons-and-money talk is a man "trying to figure out a way to get him through this winter", to middle 2027, "and then he can plan his exit." And the wrap: ISW put out "a map along with a statement" saying "Putin has given a directive to the Russian military to capture 15 or 12 settlements" or something along those lines within a certain deadline. "Complete fiction" — from "the Nuland-Kagan family's Institute for the Study of War", which "does this all the time". "Putin has never set any specific deadlines" — "he has not expressed any deadlines in public, to anybody, anywhere, at any time" — the West makes up deadlines and attributes them to Putin. Readers should know the dispute is live and documented on both sides: ISW's own pinned September 2 page asserts that "Putin has issued no fewer than 15 separate deadlines for Russian forces to seize the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, none of which Russian forces have met" (a direct contradiction of the episode's closing fact-check — judge the records against each other).