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Putin, Trump, and the inept New York Times

How could the Times so totally bungle the story of Russia’s latest peace plan and Trump’s capitulation?

If you get your news on the Russia-Ukraine negotiations from The New York Times, here is what you read this morning. Headline: “Ukraine and U.S. Cite Progress in Talks on Ending War With Russia.”

And the lead paragraph:

Ukrainian and American officials said they had made good progress on Sunday in talks about a contentious U.S. plan to end the war with Russia, even as President Trump lashed out at Ukraine, accusing its leaders of ingratitude.

Just about everything in this framing is wrong, and the rest of the piece is worse. For starters, this is not a “U.S. plan.” It’s a Putin plan. Most of the story just quotes official, soothing statements. That’s not reporting; it’s stenography. Only in paragraphs 28 and 29, if you read that far, do you get a hint of the real story:

Still, there seemed to be continued confusion about the original proposal, including among lawmakers. A group of U.S. senators said on Saturday that Mr. Rubio had told them that the document “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”

The State Department said that was “blatantly false,” and Mr. Rubio also rejected the characterization, writing on social media that “the peace proposal was authored by the U.S.”

Right. And so …? The Times doesn’t tell us.

To get the real story, you might have read The Wall Street Journal’s Saturday editorial, which points out that the 28-point plan is basically a Putin wish list, and a total capitulation.

Or you could just read the plan, which somehow escaped the attention of the Times. It gives Putin all of the Donbas in the east, prohibits NATO defense of Ukraine, requires new elections in Ukraine within 100 days (how about free and fair elections in Russia?), ends all sanctions on Russia, and a great deal more, all favoring Putin and all undercutting Ukraine.

Or to get a proper explainer piece, you could have read Heather Cox Richardson. Her post early this morning scrupulously unpacked the infighting between Vice President JD Vance, who deceptively presented Putin’s leaked plan as a joint U.S.-Russian plan, and the hapless secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

Richardson went into detail about how Rubio initially contradicted Vance, telling a group of Republican senators that the plan was in fact Putin’s, then ineptly tried to walk that back. Richardson deliciously quotes Sen. Mitch McConnell: “Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America’s interests.”

Richardson quoted Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SC) that Rubio “made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives … It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Richardson further explained, citing Reuters and other sources, that “the proposal had come out of a meeting in Miami between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and [Kirill] Dmitriev, who leads one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds” (and who is under U.S. sanctions), and that the State Department was totally out of the loop. Of course—follow the money.

The Journal, and even The Hill, have continued to run rings around the Times as this story unfolds. Trump has given Ukrainian President Zelensky until Thanksgiving to accept the plan. Zelensky has continued to resist, with the help of appalled senators from both parties.

Here’s the worst part. The byline on the Times story is Cassandra Vinograd and Nick Cumming-Bruce. Under the byline, we learn that “Cassandra Vinograd reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva”—not good locations to get the real story, which was happening elsewhere. That’s presumably why the Times piece was mainly strung-together communiqués.

And then at the end of the piece, we learn that “Andrew E. Kramer, Helene Cooper, John Eligon, Eric Schmitt, Lara Jakes and Roger Cohen contributed reporting.” You can just imagine some hapless editor in New York trying to turn eight different files into one coherent story. No wonder the result was fudge.

Eight reporters! More than Heather Cox Ricardson’s entire staff. None of whom seem to have done much reporting. At least, one of them might have read Richardson.

We await further news that’s fit to print.

–ROBERT KUTTNER

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