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U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff claims Russian President Vladimir Putin made “robust” steps toward peace during his meeting with President Donald Trump last week.
Witkoff made the statement during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with host Shannon Bream. The official was in the room for the Alaska meeting and has met previously with Putin several times.
“We agreed on much more robust security guarantees,” Witkoff said. “The Russians agreed on enshrining legislatively language that they would attest to not attempting to take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal, where they would attest to not violating any European borders.”
Witkoff also said Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders directly after the meeting. He said the meeting was “absolutely acknowledged as a win.”
Bream pressed Witkoff to explain why Trump did not push Putin for a ceasefire agreement during the meeting as well. Trump had previously said a ceasefire was a top priority and claimed Putin would face consequences if he didn’t agree to one.
“The president has always talked about a ceasefire, until he made a lot of different wins in this meeting and began to realize that we could be talking about a peace deal. The ultimate deal here is a peace deal, and we were talking about much more robust security guarantees than anyone ever imagined,” he said.
In a statement after the call with Trump, major European leaders did not address whether they preferred a peace deal over a ceasefire.
The leaders said they “welcomed President Trump’s efforts to stop the killing in Ukraine, end Russia’s war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace.”
Putin described his talks with Trump in Alaska as “very frank.”
“We, of course, respect the position of the American administration, which sees the need for a speedy end to military actions,” Putin said at the follow-up meeting at the Kremlin, adding that “we would like to move to resolving all issues by peaceful means.”
Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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