U.S. President Donald Trump‘s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has said he “liked” Russian President Vladimir Putin, while stumbling over the specifics of the most contentious issues between Moscow and Kyiv in ongoing ceasefire discussions.
Why It Matters
Witkoff has emerged as one of the main players in the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, and traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin.
Kyiv, and Ukraine’s European backers, have watched on with deepening concern over the thawing of relations between Washington and Moscow. There are pressing questions concerning NATO‘s eastern flank and among senior Ukrainian officials around how a Trump-brokered ceasefire deal to end the more than three years of war in Eastern Europe could come at the expense of Ukraine, and endanger regional security.
What To Know
Witkoff told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on his podcast that he believed the “largest issue” in the full-scale war in Ukraine was “these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea.”
Carlson supplied the name of the eastern Ukrainian Luhansk region, which Witkoff repeated, before he added, “and there’s two others.” Both referred to Luhansk by its alternative pronunciation, “Lugansk,” which is more commonly used in Russian.
The comments appear to refer to Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the four regions of mainland Ukraine that Russia annexed from Kyiv in September 2022. Donetsk and Luhansk are collectively known as the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, and Russia does not exert full control over them.
Moscow seized control of Crimea, the peninsula south of mainland Ukraine, in 2014.
Witkoff said that referendums in the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine had showed “the overwhelming majority of people have indicated they want to be under Russian rule.”
“I think that’s the key issue,” he said.
The U.S.-based think, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said on Saturday that “Witkoff uncritically repeated several inaccurate Russian claims regarding the status of the Ukrainian territories that Russia illegally occupies.”
Moscow said in fall 2022 that the “overwhelming majority” of voters in the four regions had voted in favor of Russian control. Ukraine and much of the international community, including the U.S., condemned the votes as a “sham.”
Witkoff said he had “liked” the Kremlin leader, adding: “I thought he was straight up with me.” He then said it was “gracious of [Putin] to accept me, to see me” in Moscow.
“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said.
Witkoff said the Kremlin leader was “praying for his friend” when Trump became the target of an assassination attempt on the campaign trail in July 2024.
“When the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff said. Trump, he claimed, was “clearly touched” to hear the story.
Witkoff told Carlson—a pro-Trump media personality who traveled to Moscow to interview Putin in February 2024—that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, had “conceded” that Ukraine will not gain the NATO membership for which it has long lobbied.
Ukraine has not publicly dropped its demands for membership to the alliance, which it says it needs to make sure Russia does not restart attacks its territory after inking a ceasefire deal.
Other forms of security guarantees for Kyiv are still “open for discussion,” Witkoff said.
What People Are Saying
Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff told former Fox journalist Tucker Carlson: “I want to see Ukraine come out of this OK, I want to see Russia come out of this OK.”
What Happens Next
The U.S. is expected to hold talks separately with both Ukraine and Russia in Saudi Arabia in the coming days. Witkoff said he expected a maritime ceasefire agreement covering the Black Sea to be implemented “in the next week or so.”
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