Putin is assembling a ‘heavyweight team’ to face off against Trump’s less experienced negotiators — Bloomberg

Bloomberg reports that the Kremlin’s negotiating team for upcoming peace talks with the Trump administration will include three “heavyweights” with decades of diplomacy experience. The list will reportedly include chief Kremlin foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergey Naryshkin, and financier Kirill Dmitriev (who was already involved in negotiations to free the American school teacher Marc Fogel). 

“Trump’s team by contrast lacks the same depth of background on Ukraine and has little experience negotiating directly with Russia,” Bloomberg noted in its story. Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky could reportedly join negotiations later when Ukrainian representatives are involved.

Earlier this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow considers Washington its “main counterpart” in any diplomatic effort to end the Ukraine war. However, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary did not rule out talks with Ukrainian representatives.