WASHINGTON — White House senior adviser and assistant to the president Steve Witkoff told Breitbart News exclusively that he hopes a peace summit where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in person to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine comes soon.
“I hope so,” Witkoff told Breitbart News when asked if such a summit could happen soon during a lengthy on-camera interview last week at the White House, filmed early Thursday afternoon.
Witkoff has offered to mediate such a conversation, and since this interview was filmed, the Russians and Ukrainians had a few-days-long ceasefire that was long-planned but also there have been reports suggesting a possible summit as soon as this week, possibly in Turkey.
President Donald Trump, alongside Witkoff, is en route to the Middle East for a series of meetings in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. But it would be easy for the president — or Witkoff — to break off from that trip to make it to Istanbul for such meetings if the reports are true. This interview, while taped before those reports emerged, seems to suggest there might be something to them.
“I think it’s entirely possible,” Witkoff told Breitbart News of a Zelensky-Putin peace summit possibility. “I think if the U.S. pulls back from this conflict, in other words doesn’t want to be involved with it and says it’s not my war and I’ve tried to do my best, I think that’s a bad result for everybody. It’s bad for the Europeans, it’s bad for the Ukrainians, and I don’t think it’s good for the Russians. I think the Russians actually do want a peaceful settlement, and both sides are trying to figure out what that means for them. Our job is to put them in a room together and show them that the alternatives to a peaceful resolution here are bad for everybody. That’s our job.”
Witkoff also told Breitbart News that the war is a “stupid war,” did not “need to happen,” and would not have happened had Trump been in the White House in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. But because Democrat Joe Biden was president at the time, the war proceeded and has carried on for more than three years since. Trump pledged during the 2024 campaign to end the war, and he has been aggressively negotiating with Witkoff serving as one of his top emissaries to both sides. In addition to Witkoff, the president has deployed Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — among many others — to help bring an end to the conflict once and for all.
“The president has said, and we believe in what he has said, it’s a stupid war. It didn’t need to happen,” Witkoff told Breitbart News. “It would not have happened if there wasn’t a false election and he was president. So, I think that we have to put everybody in a room. Solutions work when there are direct talks. We need to get the Ukrainians and the Russians at the same table. Now, this has been a vicious war — they don’t like each other. We have to change that. We have to get everybody thinking that the responsible way to address this is a diplomatic solution. If that’s what you want, if you, Russia, want that, if you believe in the upsides for your society in ending this war and you, Ukraine, want it too, we need to get you physically into a room. And I’ve offered to go spend as much time as they want and mediate that. What we’re suggesting is direct talks between the two parties sooner rather than later.”
Witkoff noted that Trump has “issued an ultimatum” to the two parties that they need to make progress on a lasting peace, otherwise the U.S. is walking away.
“The president has issued an ultimatum to both sides that without those direct talks and if they don’t occur quickly, then he believes the United States ought to step back from this conflict whatever that means and just not be involved,” Witkoff said. “This is something that we want to mediate. It’s not our war. We didn’t start the war, but we want to help to end it. The way that that happens is a ceasefire — everybody stops the violence, and we spend a bit of time together making sure we can deal with the major issues here and I think that we can.”
Major remaining issues to be hammered include details over the territory in Ukraine, a key nuclear power plant that is currently offline, and Ukrainian access to important waterways.
“I think the major issues here are the regions, the nuclear plant, it’s how the Ukrainians are able to use the Dnieper River and get out to the ocean,” Witkoff said. “There are things here that I don’t think are going to be difficult to solve if we get the parties to the table, they’re talking to each other, we’re narrowing issues between them, and then we’re coming up with compromises and creative solutions to address each of their concerns. We physically get that accomplished, and I think, hopefully, we’ll have some good news soon, but if we physically get that accomplished, we have, in my view, a strong chance to getting an end to this conflict.”
Asked in a follow-up question more about these remaining issues, Witkoff further explained there are about five regions in Ukraine currently disputed between the two sides — two under heavy Russian control and three under mixed Ukrainian control. He also said the offline nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, is a “little bit of a crown jewel” because of how much electricity it can produce and is currently a “big part of this discussion.” In addition, waterways and how Ukraine accesses the Black Sea — which allows it to access the world’s oceans through its connections to the Mediterranean Sea — are important as well.
“I think we’ve done a lot to narrow the issues,” Witkoff said. “The major sticking points are down to the five regions. Russia has control — overwhelming control — of two of those regions. The Ukrainians have some degree of control over three other regions, so it’s about how we’re going to assess — there’s a difference between where the battle line are, where the troops are, and the administrative lines. So we’re in a conversation with both sides informally. We want to be direct and at the bargaining table directly, but we’re in a conversation about what you would accept, Russia, in some of these areas. Would you retreat back behind certain administrative lines? The same thing with the Ukrainians. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is a big part of this discussion because it’s a little bit of a crown jewel and it’s been closed, but we need to reopen that because it delivers a lot of electricity into some of the cities in Kiev. These are sort of the issues. How Ukraine is going to access the water and get their goods to the marketplace? But I think part of the problem has been we haven’t been able to get both parties to sit at the table together.”
Witkoff has had conversations with both top Ukrainians and top Russians as one of Trump’s top emissaries trying to negotiate a solution and end to the war. He took some flak for a recent meeting he had with Putin, but he is very confident he did the right thing in doing that at the president’s direction and is proud of the conversations he has had with all the players involved.
“I’ve talked to both — to both sides — because how can you be involved in mediating or crafting solutions unless you’re talking to everybody,” Witkoff said. “I’ve talked to Andrii Yermak, I’ve talked to President Zelensky, I’ve talked to their defense minister Mr. Umerov. We have really good — we have positive discussions, positive relationships. I’ve talked to all the national security advisers who are involved in this from England, from France, from Germany, from Italy. And I’ve talked to President Putin. There is no deal without President Putin’s sign off. He is the leader of the Russian Federation, so the notion of not talking to President Putin is somehow something people are against, I don’t understand that logic. We need to talk to everybody. Any stakeholders in this conflict, we have to have a conversation with them — and we can’t accept another person’s version of what they think. We have to hear it for ourselves. That’s how you get to a solution. You put yourself in their shoes, you understand what they need, and now can we accommodate that? Can we effect those sorts of compromises? That happens from knowing the other person. Those are the assessments that the president has asked people like me to make on his behalf because he has to be the ultimate decision-maker.”
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