Trading Justice for Profit: Betraying Ukraine’s Victims of War Crimes

While Russia systematically commits war crimes, torture civilians, and steals children, American businessmen negotiate billion-dollar deals with the Kremlin

In October 2024, three powerful men huddled over a laptop at a Miami Beach waterfront estate, ostensibly to draft a peace plan for Ukraine. Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, were charting what they claimed would be a path to end the war.

But according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the full scope of their project went far beyond peace. They were privately mapping out a strategy to reintegrate Russia’s $2 trillion economy into global markets—with American businesses positioned to profit ahead of European competitors. The leaked 28-point plan included proposals for US-Russian investment projects using $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, joint exploitation of Arctic mineral wealth, rare-earth mining partnerships, and even a potential Mars mission with SpaceX.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered a pithy summary: “We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.”

As these men negotiated Russia’s commercial rehabilitation, the bodies were still being counted.

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 The Reality They’re Negotiating Away

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and five other Russian officials.[^1] The UN Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Russian authorities have committed crimes against humanity through systematic torture and enforced disappearances.[^2] Over 14,500 Ukrainian civilians have been verified killed—a figure the UN explicitly states significantly undercounts actual deaths.[^3]

This is not contested territory or “both sides” conflict. This is what genocide looks like in the 21st century.

The Bucha massacre revealed the systematic nature of Russian atrocities. When Russian forces withdrew in late March 2022, Ukrainian authorities discovered 458 bodies—civilians shot execution-style, many with hands bound behind their backs, evidence of torture including burn marks, broken bones, and mutilation.[^4] The European Union’s High Representative stated: “The word ‘Bucha’ now stands for horrific atrocities committed by the Russian army.”[^5] A New York Times investigation identified perpetrators from Russia’s 234th Air Assault Regiment.[^6] Satellite imagery proved bodies lay in the streets while Russian forces still occupied the city, destroying Moscow’s claims of Ukrainian fabrication.[^7]

Mariupol’s destruction was a methodical annihilation. The siege killed an estimated 20,000 to 87,000 civilians over three months. On March 16, 2022, Russian aircraft dropped two 500-kilogram bombs on the Drama Theatre where 500-1,200 civilians sheltered—the word “ДЕТИ” (Children) painted in giant letters visible from the air.[^8] Human Rights Watch documented the systematic targeting of civilians in Mariupol.[^9]

Systematic torture has been confirmed as Russian state policy. The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in October 2024 that torture by Russian authorities “amounts to crimes against humanity”—a coordinated state policy implemented across all occupied territories.[^10] Documented methods include electrocution (including on genitals), carving words into flesh, mock executions, and beatings so severe that victims died during sessions. Human Rights Watch documented cases where torture was used to coerce false confessions and intimidate populations in occupied areas.[^11]

The ICC issued arrest warrants in June 2024 for Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov specifically for systematic attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure—charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity.[^12] Russia destroyed or heavily damaged all thermal power plants, leaving only one-third of pre-war electricity generating capacity functional.[^13]

These are the realities as Witkoff, Kushner, and Dmitriev discussed Arctic mining concessions and Mars missions.

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 “Everybody’s Prospering”: The Business-First Doctrine

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering, and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s the language of a real estate deal—applied to war crimes.

The approach treats Russia’s territorial conquest as merely the backdrop for commercial opportunity. According to people familiar with the talks, Dmitriev was pushing to use the roughly $300 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets for US-Russian investment projects. American and Russian companies could jointly exploit Arctic mineral wealth. The rival space industries that raced during the Cold War could pursue a joint Mars mission with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Multiple American businessmen close to the Trump administration positioned themselves to profit. Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr., entered talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if sanctions were lifted. Stephen P. Lynch, another Trump donor, paid $600,000 to a lobbyist close to Trump Jr. to help secure a Treasury Department license to buy the sabotaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline from a Russian state-owned company. Exxon Mobil met with Rosneft to discuss returning to the massive Sakhalin gas project.

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs from Putin’s St. Petersburg inner circle—Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk, and the Rotenberg brothers—sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals, according to European security officials.

The message to the Kremlin was clear: commit war crimes, seize territory, and American business will still be there to help you profit.

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 Genocidal Intent: What the Business Deals Legitimise

The evidence of genocidal intent is not inferential—it is explicit, documented in hundreds of statements by Russian officials and state media.

Putin’s July 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” declared: “There is no historical basis for the idea of the Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians.” On the eve of invasion, he called Ukraine an “illegitimate invention” and threatened to show what “real decommunization would mean for Ukraine.”

On April 3, 2022—the same day bodies were discovered in Bucha—RIA Novosti published Timofey Sergeytsev’s article “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine.” It called for the “liquidation” of Ukraine’s political elite, demanded punishment for the “significant part of the masses” who are “passive Nazis,” and outlined a program of “de-Ukrainization” requiring “at least one generation” involving “ideological repression,” forced labour, imprisonment, and the death penalty. Yale historian Timothy Snyder assessed it directly: “Russia has just issued a genocide handbook.”

Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev stated: “We must not stop until the current inherently terrorist Ukrainian state is completely dismantled. It must be destroyed completely. Or rather, so that not even ashes remain from it.”

These weren’t idle threats. They were implemented as policy:

Cultural genocide is being systematically executed in occupied territories. Human Rights Watch documented in 2024 that Russian authorities imposed the Russian curriculum and language while suppressing Ukrainian identity in over 500 schools, affecting approximately one million children.[^14] Parents face explicit threats: “If you do not send your kids to the school, the kids will be sent to an orphanage.”[^15] Russia’s Education Ministry announced plans to fully eliminate Ukrainian language instruction by September 2025.[^16]

The forced deportation of children constitutes genocide under Article II(e) of the UN Genocide Convention. Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab documented over 19,000 Ukrainian children deported to Russia across 210 facilities stretching from Crimea to Siberia.[^17] Only approximately 1,236 have been returned.[^18] Putin signed decrees expediting Russian citizenship and adoption for Ukrainian children.[^19] The ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova specifically for these deportations.[^20] As of late 2024, Ukrainian officials confirmed at least 19,000 Ukrainian children remain in Russia.[^21]

This is the regime that Witkoff described as offering “vast resources” and “upside for everybody.”

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 The Moral Bankruptcy of the Miami Negotiations

The leaked 28-point plan drew immediate protests upon its release. Leaders in Europe and Ukraine complained it reflected mostly Russian talking points and bulldozed through nearly all of Kyiv’s red lines. European intelligence agencies distributed reports in Manila envelopes detailing the commercial plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic.

The diplomatic process itself revealed profound disrespect for traditional allies and democratic norms. Witkoff worked outside traditional channels, often bypassing the CIA, State Department, and Treasury’s sanctions office. Career officials at Treasury sometimes learned details of Witkoff’s meetings with Moscow from their British counterparts. The traditional Ukraine envoy, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, was “frozen out” and left the government.

Meanwhile, Dmitriev—sanctioned by the Treasury in 2022 as running a “slush fund for Vladimir Putin”—received a special waiver to travel to Washington. He arrived at the White House on April 2, 2025, and presented a list of multibillion-dollar business projects the two governments could pursue together.

The approach fundamentally reframes Russia’s war of conquest as a business opportunity rather than the greatest threat to international law since 1945.

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 The Territorial Theft Being Legitimised

Russia has illegally seized or claims approximately 137,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory—22% of the country, an area larger than Greece. This constitutes the largest territorial conquest in Europe since World War II.

Following sham referendums conducted in September 2022—with armed soldiers accompanying “election commissions” door-to-door, no secret ballot, and claimed approval rates of 87-99%—Putin signed accession treaties for four oblasts.[^22] UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/4 condemned the annexations with 143 votes in favour. Only Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria, and Russia voted against.

Witkoff’s August 2024 understanding with Putin would have required Ukraine to surrender the remaining roughly 20% of Donetsk province that Russia had failed to conquer, while Moscow would have “forfeit” its claim to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces. European officials were confused: was Putin promising to withdraw troops from these provinces, or merely promising not to conquer the thousands of square miles that remained in Ukrainian hands after years of bloody fighting?

Either way, the proposal rewards territorial conquest. It tells every authoritarian regime that nuclear blackmail works, that international borders can be redrawn through violence, and that patient aggression will eventually be legitimised through “peace deals.”

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 The Human Cost While Businessmen Negotiate

As Witkoff, Kushner, and Dmitriev charted commercial opportunities, the humanitarian catastrophe deepened:

Civilian casualties continue rising. The UN verified 14,534 civilians killed (including 745 children) and over 35,000 injured since February 2022—figures the UN explicitly acknowledges significantly undercount actual deaths.[^23][^24] The first ten months of 2025 saw 27% more civilian casualties than all of 2024.[^25]

Displacement has uprooted nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s population. Currently, 5.7 million Ukrainian refugees remain abroad, with another 3.7 million internally displaced.[^26] As of November 2025, the UN reported that over 14 million people have been forced to flee since the invasion.[^27]

Entire cities have been erased. Bakhmut, once home to 70,000 people, has been “wiped completely off the map.” Over 236,000 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed—13% of the nation’s total housing stock.[^28] More than 4,000 educational institutions and 1,554 medical facilities have been hit.

Economic devastation will burden Ukraine for decades. The World Bank’s February 2025 assessment estimates total reconstruction costs at $524 billion—2.8 times Ukraine’s 2024 GDP.[^29] Direct damages and losses exceed $152 billion.[^30]

Long-term trauma may be the most devastating legacy. WHO estimates 25% of Ukrainians have PTSD. Save the Children reports that 1.5 million children are at risk of PTSD and depression. Ukraine is now the most mine-contaminated country in the world, with 174,000 square kilometres requiring survey—full clearance will take “generations.”

This is the backdrop against which American investors explored Nord Stream pipeline acquisitions and Arctic gas projects.

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 What “Peace” Through Business Actually Means

The fundamental premise of the Witkoff-Kushner-Dmitriev approach is that economic integration creates peace. “If everybody’s prospering… that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts,” Witkoff told the Journal.

But this ignores a critical question: prosperity for whom?

Not for the families in Bucha who found their relatives in mass graves.

Not for the children tortured in Russian filtration camps.

Not for the 19,000 Ukrainian children stolen from their families and subjected to forced Russification.

Not for the residents of Mariupol, where 20,000 to 87,000 civilians were killed and 93% of buildings destroyed.

The prosperity envisioned flows to American investors snapping up Russian energy deals, to oligarchs from Putin’s inner circle resuming Arctic mining operations, and to the Kremlin regime that orchestrated the largest illegal territorial seizure in Europe in 80 years.

This isn’t “Art of the Deal” diplomacy. It’s the abandonment of principle in pursuit of profit.

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 The Precedent Being Set

History will judge whether this approach ended the war or merely emboldened aggressors worldwide.

The message being sent is unmistakable: if you possess nuclear weapons and sufficient natural resources, you can:

– Commit systematic war crimes with impunity
– Torture prisoners on an industrial scale
– Kidnap thousands of children for forced assimilation
– Illegally annex territory the size of Greece
– Target civilian infrastructure deliberately
– Publicly articulate genocidal intent

And American businessmen will still negotiate billion-dollar deals with you. The International Criminal Court will issue arrest warrants, the UN will document crimes against humanity, but in the end, “vast resources” and “upside for everybody” will prevail over international law.

China is watching this precedent as it eyes Taiwan. Every authoritarian regime is learning the lesson: the post-1945 international order exists only until someone powerful enough decides to ignore it, and Western business interests will eventually accommodate even the most egregious violations if the commercial opportunities are lucrative enough.

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 The International Legal Response

The international legal response has been unprecedented—yet enforcement remains the critical challenge.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova in March 2023 for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children.[^31] Four additional warrants followed in 2024.[^32] The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in October 2024 that Russian torture constitutes crimes against humanity “perpetrated pursuant to a coordinated state policy.”[^33]

Multiple countries have formally recognised Russia’s actions as genocide: Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Ireland. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution stating the forced deportation of children “matches with the international definition of genocide.”

Yet as courts issued warrants and findings, Witkoff was in Moscow receiving gifts from Putin, Dmitriev was presenting commercial proposals at the White House, and American investors were exploring Russian pipeline acquisitions.

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The Moral Test of Our Time

The documentation is not ambiguous. Russia has committed war crimes on a massive scale. Russian leaders have publicly articulated genocidal intent. Russia has illegally seized territory larger than many European nations. The humanitarian catastrophe will reverberate for generations.

Any “peace” negotiation that rewards this aggression with territorial concessions, sanctions relief, and normalisation of commercial relations does not end the war—it validates the method.

When Witkoff says “everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it,” he’s not describing peace. He’s describing how American businesses profit from genocide.

The Kremlin’s own words reveal their ultimate objective: not Donbas, not Crimea, not “buffer zones”—but the elimination of Ukraine as a nation. Medvedev’s statement that Ukraine must be destroyed “so that not even ashes remain” is not rhetoric. It is policy, evidenced by mass graves, torture chambers, stolen children, and flattened cities.

What happens in Ukraine will determine whether the post-1945 international order survives or whether we return to an era when powerful states simply take what they want. The evidence presented here—drawn from the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Bank, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and verified investigations by dozens of credible institutions—establishes beyond reasonable doubt the nature of Russia’s war.

The only question remaining is whether the world will act on that evidence or whether “business” will once again trump human rights, international law, and the lives of millions.

History will not look kindly on those who chose Arctic mining deals over justice for genocide victims.

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