Ordinarily, when it comes to U.S. diplomacy, the role played by interpreters tends not to be notable. When it comes to the Trump administration and meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, however, the usual rules don’t seem to apply.
The Washington Post reported in 2019, for example, that Donald Trump had gone to “extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations” with Putin, at one point even “taking possession” of his own interpreter’s notes after a conversation with the Russian leader.
This came to mind six years later after seeing this NBC News report.
President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News. Steve Witkoff, who has been tasked with negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, met with Putin in Moscow for several hours on Feb. 11, on March 13, and in St. Petersburg on April 11, and “used their translators,” one of the Western officials said.
NBC News’ report added that Witkoff, by relying on Kremlin interpreters, “ran the risk that some of the nuance in Putin’s messages was missed and he would not have been able to independently verify what was being said to him, two former American ambassadors said.”
Fox News asked Sen. Tom Cotton for his reaction to the allegations, and the Arkansas Republican said Witkoff is “doing what the president has asked.”
I suppose that’s true, though it doesn’t negate the underlying concerns.
At face value, it’s an ongoing question as to why Witkoff is tackling these tasks in the first place. We are, after all, talking about a New York real estate developer with no meaningful experience in foreign policy or delicate international diplomacy, someone who’s been dispatched to work on Iran’s nuclear policy and negotiating an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The billionaire’s amateurishness has been a routine problem. For example, Witkoff apparently considered it a major breakthrough when Putin gave him a “beautiful portrait” of Trump that Putin had commissioned by a “leading” Russian artist.








