Who Leaked The Calls? Three Possibilities

Russian Intelligence

There are two ways to interpret why Russian intelligence might have leaked this source. The first is that the Kremlin is far from unified. Leaks are not unusual and have occurred before. We already know Lavrov and Dmitriev are not on good terms. A leaked Russian account even describes Dmitriev securing Putin’s personal approval to join the Saudi talks without informing Lavrov. When told the third seat was for Dmitriev, an irritated Lavrov reportedly pushed the chair away and insisted only Putin could authorise his presence — a rare public glimpse of internal Kremlin friction. And in the cut-throat Kremlin, with a history steeped in court politics since the days of Stalin, could someone really be petty enough to leak purely to prove Ushakov’s fears about the peace plan? It’s possible, though it’s hard to imagine Putin would tolerate such sabotage if negotiations were moving in the direction he wanted.

But you may be thinking: what do you mean if it was going the way he wanted? That leads us to the second possibility.

Part of the original leak of the peace document appeared designed to show Russia as “ready for peace” and cooperating with the US, essentially putting the ball in Zelensky’s court. This has been both sides' game all year, and many analysts believe Putin is the primary architect: shifting the burden of refusal onto Kyiv so Ukraine must prove to Trump that they are not the obstacle to peace. If we remove the bias from other analysts, a fundamental issue is that neither Putin nor Zelensky have wanted to shift on hardline objectives.

Now consider the recent Geneva talks between the US and Ukraine. Accounts differ, but Rubio described them as the most productive yet. If Zelensky agrees to the revised peace plan, the ball will land in Putin’s court, and he will have to decide whether to accept it. One could argue that by leaking this audio, knowing the “peace ball” may soon land on his side, someone in Moscow may have wanted to deflate it before it arrived, especially if the original plan backfired politically.

And over all of this hangs the broader question: does Putin even want to end the war? He appears convinced he can still win by blood and iron, taking at minimum the Donbas (and, possibly, Zaporizhzhia) within the next 12–18 months.

European Intelligence

Senior Trump Administration officials now believe the October phone call between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin’s top foreign-policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov wasn’t leaked from inside Washington or Moscow at all. According to the Wall Street Journal, they now suspect a foreign intelligence service, almost certainly European, intercepted the call by targeting Ushakov’s phone and then handed the recording to Bloomberg.

Now why would the Europeans do this? Early signals suggested the Trump administration didn’t want Europe involved in this latest round of peace talks. Then you look at some of the points in the plan that were simply not favourable to Europe. Point 14 is the clearest example: the plan gives the US half the profits, asks Europe to put in $100bn, unfreezes EU assets, and pushes the remaining Russian funds into a joint US-Russia investment vehicle. Meanwhile, Zelensky himself has said any agreement must involve his European allies, who have carried the bulk of the burden this year for funding And this ties into a wider issue for Europe: it struggles to stay relevant. It’s far behind the US in innovation and equally behind China in manufacturing. Diplomatically, it’s fractured — and fractured means weak. Europe even produced its own peace plan, and yet when Rubio left his meeting with Umerov, he told a reporter he didn’t even know the Europeans had made one.

If peace talks go ahead without European input, it would be a global humiliation. Leaking this call may have been their way of stopping that scenario from happening. Add to that the fact Europe is already committing hundreds of billions to a military build-up for a war that might end long before that build-up is complete — and the incentive becomes even clearer.

News/Journal sources available upon request, not shown to maintain visual integrity of page. Read Witkoff-Ushakov transcript here: Read Ushakov-Dmitriev transcript here