FT: American lawyer helped open a backchannel between Biden's White House and Putin

The Financial Times (FT) has published new details of a back channel between the U.S. government and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 and early 2023. It was set up by Richard Conn, an American corporate lawyer with many years of experience in Russia, who feared after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin might use nuclear weapons. The channel ended even before Joe Biden's administration left office, and later U.S. attempts at peace, involving other people, have not succeeded either.

How the channel began

Conn is a corporate lawyer and investor who began working in Russia in 1992, when he founded the Russian office of the law firm Latham & Watkins. In March 2022 he received a call from an unnamed Russian businessman who worried that the failure to take Kyiv was pushing Putin toward tactical nuclear weapons. Conn decided to use his contacts among American investors in Russia to link Washington and the Kremlin directly, bypassing Russia's Foreign Ministry.

He reached Putin through investor Bob Foresman, who knew Matthias Warnig, a longtime friend of Putin, a former Stasi officer and later head of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 projects. On the American side, Conn enlisted Eric Green, who oversaw Russia policy at the U.S. National Security Council.

Messages and response

Contact was established in September 2022, and the men met in Zurich on October 4. Warnig was then given a White House message: the U.S. was not seeking regime change, was not trying to destroy Russia and wanted peace. On October 26 at Frankfurt Airport, Warnig relayed Putin's reply, saying he was open to negotiations but ready to keep fighting. The next day, at the Valdai Discussion Club, Putin said nuclear weapons made no political or military sense for Russia. The FT notes that confidential talks were also going on through official channels between Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Yuri Ushakov.

Peace proposals and collapse

Conn and Foresman then tried to act as unofficial mediators between Russia and Ukraine. Their proposals envisioned Russian withdrawal from most of the recently annexed regions, Ukrainian acceptance of Russian control over Crimea, and NATO-country protection for Ukraine. Putin reviewed them on February 1, 2023, ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine but allowed EU membership. Ukraine's leadership rejected the concessions. The channel effectively ended on February 18, when Warnig said Sullivan had not confirmed Conn's authority.