President Donald Trump’s top negotiator with Vladimir Putin, Steve Witkoff, is talking up the “very compelling commercial opportunities” with Russia and said there’s “no doubt” the U.S. will soon be cutting deals with the Kremlin.
Witkoff announced the possible partnership during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who said, “I would imagine Vladimir Putin probably would want to be in business with the U.S., and with Europe. Is that a potential that could come out of this?”
“There’s no doubt about it,” responded Witkoff, commenting days after he met with Putin on Friday in St. Petersburg.
The pact would come amid Trump’s efforts to deepen new ties with Russia, which before the president took office had been isolated by the U.S. and Europe over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since then Trump has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and suggested that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion.
“I believe there’s a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region too,” Witkoff, a longtime friend of Trump and real estate magnate, said. “Partnerships create stability.”
And despite some “real problematic” things happening between the countries, Witkoff added, peace is on the horizon.
Hannity seemed to approve of the proposed U.S-Russia trade relationship.
“Money solves a lot of problems, Steve,” he told Witkoff. “You’ve been a successful businessman your whole career.”
Witkoff has taken a leading role in the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks and told Hannity that he sees a deal “emerging.” He called his five-hour meeting with Putin “compelling” and added that “towards the end we actually came up with, finally… what Putin’s request is to get, to have a permanent peace here.”
“So beyond a ceasefire, we got an answer to that,” he added, referencing the 30-day ceasefire deal that Putin rebuffed.
Witkoff did not provide any details about Putin’s demands for a permanent truce but suggested the deal is “about these so-called five territories” and “there’s so much more to it.”
Although Witkoff did not name the territories directly, he was likely referring to Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, as well as the partially occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. Putin annexed the latter four areas in 2022.
Witkoff’s third meeting comes as Trump urges Russia to speed up the peace talks, saying Friday the country “has to get moving.”
He called the war something that “should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!”
While Zelensky and several of Trump’s senior aides have warned him to be more skeptical of Putin’s desire for peace, the president has nevertheless sided with Witkoff and gone forward with the peace talks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg have both cautioned the president about Putin, urging him to draw a harder line on the Kremlin’s demands for territorial concessions.
Trump announced during his presidential campaign that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war on Day 1 of his presidency. But as the months drag on, Putin has rejected Trump’s call for ceasefire and dragged his feet on suspending the fighting. Russian forces have also repeatedly violated a partial truce protecting energy infrastructure.
Although the president has occasionally grown frustrated with Putin’s idleness, he has not followed through on imposing harsher consequences like imposing sanctions on Russian oil exports.
Trump’s flexibility with Russia comes as he enacts major tariffs on other countries, including a baseline 10 percent tax on goods. The move has frayed ties with the closest U.S. allies and thrown the world economy into chaos.
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