The Kremlin has reacted angrily following the leak of a call transcript that reveals a senior Moscow aide’s agreement to have Vladimir Putin praise Donald Trump as part of efforts to broker a peace deal in Ukraine.

Bloomberg released transcripts indicating that Steve Witkoff had advised Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, suggesting the Russian President should reach out to Trump. Witkoff proposed that Putin congratulate Trump for a Gaza peace deal, express Russia’s support, and commend Trump as a man of peace.

On Wednesday, Ushakov announced he would contact the presidential envoy regarding the leak from the October 14 phone call, describing it as intolerable.

When reporters inquired whether Ushakov would discuss the leak with Witkoff during his upcoming visit to Moscow to meet with Putin, the aide replied.

“Regarding the leak? We will discuss our perspectives over the phone,” Ushakov stated.

He further mentioned that parts of the leaked information were ‘fabricated’, but refrained from commenting on the rest, citing the call’s confidential nature.

Leaking a discussion of a serious issue was ‘of course unacceptable’, he added.

Ushakov said earlier that the call was probably leaked in order to hinder the talks.

In an interview with Kommersant newspaper, he said that some of his conversations were conducted through encrypted government channels, which are rarely intercepted and leaked unless one of the parties deliberately intends to do so.

‘There are certain conversations on WhatsApp that, generally speaking, someone might somehow be able to listen to,’ Ushakov said. 

He ruled out the possibility that the leak could have come from the participants in the calls whose contents were leaked. 

In the wake of the Bloomberg report, the Kremlin has pulled back from any suggestion that it is close to reaching peace wih Ukraine.

When asked by reporters if a peace deal was near, Moscow spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered: ‘Wait, it’s premature to say that yet.’ 

When asked why he thought the call was leaked, Ushakov said the publishing of the transcript was intended to scupper peace negotiations.

‘To hinder, probably. It is unlikely this was done to improve relations,’ he said.

‘I would make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement, that you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen,’ Witkoff told Ushakov during the leaked phone call.

‘From that, it’s going to be a really good call,’ Trump’s Special Envoy said.

His Russian counterpart accepted the advice, telling Witkoff: ‘Hey Steve, I agree with you that he will congratulate, he will say that Mr. Trump is a real peace man and so and so.’

The Witkoff-Ushakov call happened a day after Trump made a triumphant visit to Israel and Egypt to celebrate sealing the Gaza ceasefire.

The transcript reveals that the White House intended to model the Ukraine-Russia peace deal on Trump’s 28-point plan to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

‘Here’s what I think would be amazing,’ Witkoff said during the call. ‘Maybe he says to President Trump: you know, Steve and Yuri discussed a very similar 20-point plan to peace and that could be something that we think might move the needle a little bit, we’re open to those sorts of things.’

The leak of the call has sparked accusations that Witkoff favours the Russians over the Ukrainians and is unfit to steer negotiations.

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who has been critical of Trump’s approach to Ukraine, wrote on X: ‘He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired.’

The transcript shows that Witkoff suggested setting up a Trump-Putin call before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House visit later that week.

The American and Russian leaders ended up speaking to each other a day before Trump held talks with Zelensky.

Shortly after that meeting with the Ukrainian President on October 17, Trump said that Ukraine and Russia should ‘stop where they are’ on the battlefield – meaning Ukraine should concede territory Russia had seized from its neighbour.

‘You stop at the battle line, and both sides should go home, go to their families,’ Trump told reporters on his journey to his home in West Palm Beach, Florida. ‘Stop the killing. And that should be it. Stop right now at the battle line. I told that to President Zelensky. I told it to President Putin.’

He seemed more intent on ‘stopping the war immediately’ than supporting Kyiv’s war effort, such as supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles. ‘We want Tomahawks, also. We don’t want to be giving away things that we need to protect our country,’ Trump said.

‘He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia,’ Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to his home in Florida on Tuesday night.

‘That’s what a dealmaker does.’

A U.S.-based framework for ending the war, first reported last week, prompted fresh concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted toward Moscow.

However, the Bloomberg report came as Trump on Tuesday said the proposal had been ‘fine-tuned’ following pushback from Kyiv and Europe, who warned against giving in too easily to the Kremlin’s maximalist demands.

Trump announced he is sending Witkoff to meet with Putin next week.

‘As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,’ Ushakov told Russian state television’s top Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin.

Ushakov said that in addition to Witkoff ‘a number of other administration representatives who are involved in Ukrainian affairs’ would also come to Moscow.

The U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll is being sent to Ukraine, after meeting with officials from Kyiv and Moscow in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday.

On Sunday, U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators held talks on the Trump-backed peace plan in Geneva, which a joint-statement described as ‘highly productive’.

On October 29, Ushakov spoke by phone with Kirill Dmitriev – a close adviser to Putin on Ukraine – and debated how strongly Moscow should push for its demands in a prospective peace proposal, according to another recording reviewed by Bloomberg.

‘I´ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal. And let them do like their own,’ Dmitriev told Ushakov in the back and forth. ‘But, I don´t think they´ll take exactly our version, but at least it´ll be as close to it as possible.’

The exchange happened soon after Dmitriev had traveled to Florida for talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and informal adviser, that centered on creating the framework for a 28-point peace plan.

The original plan, which became public last week, appeared heavily skewed toward Russian demands and included calls for Ukraine to cede the entire Donbas region to Russia and dramatically reduce the size of its military.

It also included an agreement from Europe that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the NATO military alliance.

‘This story proves one thing: Special Envoy Witkoff talks to officials in both Russia and Ukraine nearly every day to achieve peace, which is exactly what President Trump appointed him to do,’ White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Dmitriev said in a social media post that the transcript was ‘Fake’ and said in a second post: ‘The closer we get to peace, the more desperate warmongers become.’ The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted the draft proposal was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians, in response to bipartisan pushback in Washington that the leaked plan amounted to a Russian wish list.

‘This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form,’ said Republican Mike Rounds from South Dakota, speaking at a security conference in Canada. ‘They want to utilise it as a starting point.’

He added that the draft ‘looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with’.

Rubio said accusations that the deal was authored by the Russians were ‘blatantly false’.

Ukraine on Tuesday signalled support for the framework of a peace deal with Russia but stressed that sensitive issues needed to be fixed at an upcoming meeting between Zelensky and Trump.

A U.S. official claimed Kyiv had agreed to an updated proposal, that revised the deal from 28 points to a 19-point peace plan that no longer includes amnesty guarantees for atrocities committed during the war.

As opposed to reducing its military personnel from 900,000 to 600,000, as the original draft outlined, Kyiv has agreed to cap its army at 800,000 men.

It is less favorable to Moscow, leaving it up to Trump and Ukrainian President to decide the most sensitive terms, including territorial disputes and U.S. security guarantees.

Putin is expected to dismiss the new deal ‘out of hand’ – leading to longer drawn-out negotiations Trump has tried to avoid, sources in Washington said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Tuesday that if the plan ‘erased … key understandings’ that Putin reached with Trump at the Alaska summit in August, the ‘situation will be fundamentally different’.

That initial plan had permanently ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and proposed handing the rest of Donbas to Russia – albeit as a demilitarized zone – and mandated that Kyiv hold elections within 100 days.

All those clauses are reported to have since been amended or shelved for now.

Zelensky confirmed that talks with Washington were ongoing in a post on X, adding: ‘I am grateful for all of America’s efforts and personally for President Trump’s efforts.’

Ushakov said that British, EU and Ukrainian inspired changes to the original U.S. draft submitted over the weekend were ‘unconstructive’.

On Saturday, leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan signed a joint statement at the G20 summit in South Africa, saying that the peace deal had elements ‘essential for a just and lasting peace’, but would ‘require additional work’, citing concerns over territory and limits on Ukraine’s army.

The EU submitted a modified version of the US’s peace plan for Ukraine that pushed back on proposed limits to Kyiv’s armed forces and territorial concessions.

The document, drafted by the so-called European E3 powers – Britain, France and Germany – proposes that Ukraine’s military be capped at 800,000 ‘in peacetime’ rather than a blanket cap of 600,000.

It also says ‘negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact’, rather than pre-determining that certain areas should be recognized as ‘de facto Russian’, as the US plan suggests.

It proposes that Ukraine receive a security guarantee from the United States similar to NATO’s Article 5 clause.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials have been trying to narrow the gaps between them over the plan to end Europe’s deadliest and most devastating conflict since World War Two, with Ukraine wary of being strong-armed into accepting a deal largely on the Kremlin’s terms, including territorial concessions.

‘Ukraine – after Geneva – supports the framework’s essence, and some of the most sensitive issues remain as points for the discussion between presidents,’ a Ukrainian official said.

Zelensky could visit the United States in the next few days to finalise a deal with Trump, Kyiv’s national security chief Rustem Umerov said, though no such trip was confirmed from the U.S. side.