When I told Times Radio’s Frontline on Thursday that Melania Trump’s White House gathering of Russian and Ukrainian officials looked like a PR stunt, and that the Ukrainians risked walking into a trap, I’d hoped to be wrong.
I wasn’t.
The event was billed as a celebration of the six-day ceasefire the First Lady helped broker in Oleshky, the Russian-occupied town in the Kherson region where nearly 800 people were evacuated. The White House styled her the “Exclusive Intermediary” between Moscow and Kyiv, a role it says was memorialized in written agreements signed by both sides on October 23. That evacuation is real, and it matters. But what happened at the podium tells you who came out ahead.
Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, presented Mrs. Trump with a framed drawing of pink hearts, purportedly by Lydia, an 11-year-old girl from Oleshky who, he said, “chose to live with her family in Russia.” The drawing read: “I love Melania.” Then Dmitriev added: “This message from children frankly overshadows any diplomatic statement anybody can make.”
Moments earlier, the Ukrainian delegation had presented the First Lady with a state award “for your brave heart, for saving our people, and for returning Ukrainian children.”
That award deserves a footnote. As World Briefing correspondent Enzokuhle Jojo reported last week, the White House says the First Lady has helped reunite 34 children. Kyiv credits her with 26, roughly 1% of the Ukrainian children returned so far. Every child brought home matters. But the record is thinner than the White House claims, and it was standing beside Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, whom Ukrainian authorities link to the deportation system itself.
Let that sit for a moment. Ukraine thanked her for bringing its children home. Russia handed her a Ukrainian child’s drawing as proof that its children choose Moscow. And it happened in the White House, while Vladimir Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court for the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.
Dmitriev’s defenders will point to his role in some family reunifications. A handful of returns doesn’t erase a deportation system, and it doesn’t excuse turning a child into a prop.
The First Lady smiled throughout. “We have chosen humanity over war,” she told the room. In her entire speech, according to the White House’s own transcript, she never once mentioned Russia’s invasion or who started this war. She did find room to credit Vladimir Putin, saying the ceasefire “would not be possible without President Putin and President Zelensky,” and to thank Putin’s envoy for his “cooperation and professionalism.”
The humanity didn’t last long. While the Oleshky truce was still in place, a Russian jet-powered drone tore through a crowded platform at Dnipro’s railway station as a train prepared to leave for Zaporizhzhia, killing 15. The truce expired on Sunday. The next day, Russian aircraft dropped nine bombs on a school in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, that was being used to hand out humanitarian aid. As of this morning, the death toll stands at 53, according to the regional governor, and rescuers are still pulling bodies from the rubble.
The truce had a deeper flaw. “Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire without a single independent monitor in the room, and Russia used that gap to stage exactly the picture it wanted the world to see,” Lyudmyla Yankina of the Ukrainian human rights group Civil Fortis told the Daily Beast. In Kyiv, one international source, stifling a laugh, told a French newspaper: “Having realized he won’t be getting the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps Trump wants to try and get it for Melania.”
Sky News’ Washington correspondent made the point the room never heard: none of this would have been needed in Oleshky if Russia hadn’t invaded and used civilians as human shields.
Then the President met only the Russians
After the event, which he didn’t attend, Donald Trump met privately with Dmitriev. He confirmed to reporters that he did not meet the Ukrainians. He wouldn’t say what he and Putin’s envoy discussed. But straight afterwards, he predicted a deal: “It’s going to be a big agreement, and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine… it might involve all of Europe. It’s going to be a big, beautiful agreement, and everyone’s going to be thrilled.”
Dmitriev, who remains under U.S. Treasury sanctions, came away with a private audience with the President. Kyiv’s delegation, ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and parliamentary leader Davyd Arakhamia, came away with a photo op.
The Ukrainians I’ve spoken to here in Odesa share my view: this was an embarrassment, Kyiv should never have sent anyone, and the Trump White House is still firmly tilted toward Moscow.
Part of the reason Kyiv misread this is structural. Ukraine has had no ambassador in Washington since early August. When you have no one on the ground reading the room, you’re reading signals from a distance. These are the traps you walk into.
A pattern of Russian PR wins
Thursday wasn’t a one-off. Look at the past few weeks:
Lavrov in Atlanta. Sergey Lavrov, who is on the U.S. sanctions list, sat at the G20 foreign ministers’ table in Atlanta last week. The group photo was cancelled after European diplomats refused to pose with him.
The diesel deal. Trump’s October 9 deal with Putin to bring more than 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel to market has so far delivered nothing to American shores. Two sanctioned tankers bound for the U.S. East Coast have changed course, one toward Brazil and one into the Mediterranean, as buyers and port operators fear legal exposure. Analysts said it was never going to move prices much anyway. Trump details have never stood in the way of a Trump policy. But for Moscow, the headline was the win.
The road to Florida. Put it together, and I’ll repeat what I said on Times Radio: this is almost certainly opening the door to Putin attending the G20 leaders’ summit Trump is hosting at his Miami golf club in December. Meanwhile, Washington has shut out last year’s G20 host, South Africa, and its democratically elected president, Cyril Ramaphosa. There’s room at Trump’s table for a man wanted by the ICC, but not for an African democracy.
A “big, beautiful” framework, without details
Hours later, the outlines of that “big, beautiful agreement” came from Brussels, where Jared Kushner met Ukrainian, NATO and European officials. He sketched five broad goals: permanent consultations, crisis communications, military transparency, de-escalation steps and a long-term European security framework. He insisted that no country would have “a veto over another’s sovereign choices” and that NATO would remain central. There is no text, no timeline and no signatories. Trilateral talks are due in Abu Dhabi on November 10–11.
As I’ve argued before, including yesterday on Times Radio, if there’s to be a real peace process, it’s more likely to come through a neutral mediator like Turkey’s President Erdoğan than through Washington.
Ballrooms and monuments
And at home? After his party’s midterm drubbing, the President’s priorities were on full display. On Thursday he signed a proclamation declaring the Oval Office a national monument, saying it “will not be allowed to be touched by anybody.” This came shortly after he toured reporters through his new White House ballroom. Meanwhile, millions of Americans feel one flat tire or one illness away from bankruptcy.
The worst may be yet to come
I once thought we’d seen the worst of Mr. Trump on foreign policy. I now think the opposite: we haven’t seen the worst of him yet.
January can’t come soon enough. That’s when a new Congress takes its seats, and when, hopefully, it stops acting as a staffing arm of the White House and starts acting as a check on it.
Until then, buckle up.
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News Briefs
A string of bomb threats continued to target flights across Europe on Friday. A Ryanair flight travelling from Rome to Lisbon was placed under a security alert after an anonymous phone call to the control tower at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport warned of a possible explosive device on board, according to reports. The aircraft landed at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport shortly before 8 am. Authorities are investigating the threat, but there has been no confirmation of explosives on board. Meanwhile, the French Prime Minister’s office declared that there had been four more bomb alerts concerning “planes flying over French territory” on Friday morning. Concerning the Rome-Lisbon flight, CNN Portugal reported that Portugal's Public Security Police (PSP) received a telephone call from a person described as a "law enforcement officer", warning of a possible explosive device on board. The caller's identity was reportedly verified by the Judicial Police (PJ). The latest incidents follow a wave of bomb scares that affected at least 25 flights across Europe on Thursday. EU officials have said it is too early to determine whether the incidents are linked - Euronews
The White House faced calls for policy and personnel shakeups after brutal midterm elections, with the defense secretary under most pressure. Senior Republican lawmakers and strategists have reportedly pressed the Trump administration to fire the Pentagon chief and swiftly end the Iran war, blamed for fuel-price inflation that topped voters’ concerns. Their calls add to mounting criticism of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. An outgoing Republican lawmaker will next week seek to begin impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives, though it’s unclear if such efforts will gain momentum in the Senate. US President Donald Trump’s calculus on Hegseth is tricky: Firing him after the new Congress sits in January will require confirmation from a Democrat-controlled Senate - Semafor
Republican leaders took early steps signaling potential 2028 presidential bids, using disastrous midterm elections to distance themselves from the Trump administration, Semafor reported. Florida’s governor, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination in 2024, has been among the loudest critics of Republican leadership in recent days and did not rule out running in the next presidential race while on CNN. Administration figures including the vice president — whose post blaming midterms losses on the Iran war was seen as a sign of his Oval Office ambitions — secretary of state, and defense secretary all face headwinds over their links to US President Donald Trump. Beyond intra-party fights, however, one person close to the White House told Semafor, “The actual question is: Can any Republican win?”
The European Commission has accused TikTok of violating its online platforms rules for having designed algorithms that lead users down so-called rabbit holes. The preliminary findings announced Friday mark the first time the Commission has focused on a social media platform’s recommender systems as a breach of its powerful Digital Services Act, under which it can issue fines up to 6% of a company’s annual global revenue. In Friday’s announcement, the Commission says the company didn’t adequately consider the risk of sending users down “rabbit holes” through a “continuous stream of personalised videos, even when those are related to mental health struggles and body image.” The investigation focused on mental health impacts because “the evidence was strongest,” when asked about how these rabbit holes contribute to radicalization, said another official. The more users interact with content, even if it’s potentially harmful, the more of that content they are recommended, the Commission said in its press release, which noted that the measures TikTok has put in place to curb the rabbit hole effect have not been effective. TikTok should take into account “explicit” signals like buttons that say “I’m not interested” more than implicit ones, like engagement, said the first Commission official - Politico
Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego says he wants Elon Musk under subpoena as early as January, when he expects Democrats to control the levers that would let them compel the billionaire to testify. Speaking to TMZ in Washington on Thursday, Gallego said he wants answers on last month’s restrictions to Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade satellite service used by Ukraine’s armed forces. He wants to know whether Musk personally ordered the curbs, cleared them with Washington or acted alone. His argument is that no private company should hold that kind of unchecked sway over national security. The backstory matters. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 20 that Musk personally ordered the slowdown, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter. The reported restrictions disrupted Ukrainian drone and air-defence operations. Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio both denied that Washington ordered the changes. Neither Musk nor the U.S. government has accepted responsibility, and each has said publicly that only the other could have made the call. Kyiv says service has since been restored to normal. That finger-pointing is the real story. A front-line army’s ability to fly drones and stop incoming strikes was throttled for days. The two parties who could have done it each say it was the other. Whatever a subpoena turns up, Ukraine and every other U.S. partner now face an uncomfortable question: what happens when an ally’s critical wartime infrastructure answers to one man’s discretion?
The journals…
LOCK HER UP WITH THE REST OF THE TREASONOUS GRIFTING TRAITORS.