Page F5From§Eachthe midnight edition — 4 October 2026
As it ran on the front
A number is what you will want, and the report does not carry one. The report does not say what moves the other way. An agent negotiates for a principal, and whatever is handed to the agent across the table belongs to the principal; that is the theory, and a theory is not a statute.
Do note what the two carried in with them. 4 September, Moscow and Kyiv. 6 September, talks the envoys called "encouraging". 7 September, Witkoff's "substantive progress". 14 September, after the President had criticised Zelensky for raising diesel prices with drone strikes on Russian refineries: "Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets." And what did Ukraine get for the refineries? An announcement ... on Truth Social, by the president of a third country. Then the refineries come to the table as merchandise, offered to the two men brokering the peace.…
…(cont) Ukraine gave up the targets. Kushner and Witkoff were offered the targets. No waiver is required.
A truce the hens kept. The fox has not been fed yet.
“They sold you the ceasefire as peace — neither side hits the oil, everybody calms down. Three weeks later the same two guys who got Ukraine to put those refineries off the target list are sitting across a table from Putin while he pitches them a piece of the refineries. That is not diplomacy, that is a listing agreement, and the diesel in your tank is somewhere inside it.”
“These are private citizens doing this out of patriotism, they are not drawing a government salary, so the conflict rules — did I say conflict? That does not sound like me. Putin raised it, nobody can control what another man raises in a room, and you cannot ask the president's people to be rude to him mid-negotiation. A ceasefire is a ceasefire no matter who ends up holding the paper on a refinery.”
Earlier in this story
The receipts
Trump promised to settle the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, on 53 separate occasions, CNN counted CNN fact check, 25 April 2025 (all 53 instances)
U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump AlliesPresident Vladimir V. Putin brought up a sale of Russian energy assets with President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, pushing a deal that raises new questions about conflicts of interest.
· Trump says Ukraine and Russia have agreed to energy target ceasefire from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
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