Moscow: Russia said on Wednesday that the leak of a recording of a call between top advisers to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was an unacceptable attempt to undermine Ukraine peace negotiations and amounted to hybrid warfare.
Bloomberg News published the transcript of an October 14 telephone call in which Trump envoy Steve Witkoff advised Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov on how to pitch a Ukraine peace plan to Trump.
Bloomberg said it had reviewed the recording but did not say how it got access to a highly sensitive conversation between top officials of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Ushakov said that his conversations with Witkoff were not intended for publication and they should not have been leaked.
“This is unacceptable,” Ushakov told Russian media. He said the leak was clearly aimed at hindering discussions between Russia and the United States.
In an interview with Kommersant newspaper, Ushakov 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 call, and said he would be raising the matter with Witkoff.
Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, a Putin investment envoy, said that Bloomberg’s report on an October 29 call between him and Ushakov was “fake”.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, said some media organisations were being used as part of a hybrid information war waged by European countries against Russia – and aimed at undermining ties with Washington.
Bloomberg did not respond to a request for comment on the Russian criticism, or on how it obtained the recordings. Reuters competes with Bloomberg News.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper’s top Kremlin reporter, who interviewed Ushakov, headlined his story: “Who set up Steve Witkoff?”
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Mark Trevelyan, Gleb Bryanski and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan)
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