Trump envoy Steve Witkoff echoes Kremlin’s views on Ukraine ahead of peace talks

As US and Ukrainian officials started peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff repeated Moscow’s claims that many Ukrainians want to be under Russian control and advocated for US-Russian relations.

Volodymyr Zelensky (C) meeting soldiers during a meeting with officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at an undisclosed location in the Donetsk region. Picture: AFP.

On the eve of talks in Saudi Arabia, President Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, echoed some of the Kremlin’s main talking points on the Ukraine war, while advocating for future US-Russian relations based on shared business interests.

In a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson, Witkoff articulated a vision for the biggest reset in Washington-Moscow relations since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He also recounted his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, saying the Russian president had a portrait commissioned of Trump.

Witkoff, who insisted he wasn’t taking sides, repeated Moscow’s assertions that the overwhelming majority of the people in four parts of eastern Ukraine “want to be under Russian rule” and pointed to Kremlin-run referendums in those areas that the European Union and the US have denounced as shams.

“The question is will they be, will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?” Witkoff said. “Will Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict. Absolutely.”

The interview came as US officials met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials Sunday (local time) and planned talks with a Russian delegation on Monday. The goal, US officials say, is to extend a shaky ceasefire precluding attacks on energy infrastructure to the Black Sea. The US hopes the ceasefire will be followed by broader negotiations.

US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has echoed Russia’s views of Ukraine in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Picture: AFP.

“We are now going to talk about a Black Sea maritime ceasefire so that both sides can move grain, fuel and start conducting trade again in the Black Sea,” national security adviser Mike Waltz said Sunday on the CBS television show “Face the Nation.” “Then we’ll talk about the line of control, which is the actual front lines, and that gets into the details of verification mechanisms, peace keeping, you know, freezing the lines where they are. And then, of course, the broader and permanent peace, which will be some type of discussion of territory for permanent peace.”

Ukrainian drones have largely neutralised the military effectiveness of Russia’s Black Sea fleet while the Russians have launched air attacks on Ukrainian port cities such as Odessa. Ukraine has managed to secure its shipping routes, but Russia has complained that its own food and fertiliser exports have faced obstacles.

Russian and Ukrainian teams won’t meet face-to-face in Saudi Arabia, but will convey their positions to the US, which will serve as mediator. Speaking Sunday on Fox News, Witkoff defended the Trump administration’s efforts to cut a peace deal, saying he was acting as an impartial broker in talks. “This is not me taking sides,” he said.

In his interview with Carlson, he hailed an agreement earlier this month between Russia and Ukraine not to hit each other’s energy infrastructure, and said Trump is trying to clinch a fair deal for Ukraine and Russia. Witkoff touted the benefits of restarting Russian business ties broadly frozen by Moscow’s decision to invade its smaller and poorer Western neighbour.

Moscow has lately indicated its interest in the latest round of talks by including a high-level security service official who is close to Putin. At Riyadh, Russia will be represented by Grigory Karasin, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, as well as Sergey Beseda, adviser to the Federal Security Service.

Ukraine is represented by Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s minister of defence, who wrote on social media that the military and energy experts Kyiv is sending want to discuss proposals to protect “critical infrastructure.” Russia has continued to attack Ukraine with airstrikes and drones, which have killed and wounded Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social-media post Sunday.

The US team includes senior officials from Trump’s National Security Council and State Department, but not top officials and envoys such as Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff.

Witkoff was part of a top level US delegation that met with senior Russian officials in February in Riyadh. On Sunday he told Fox that he has spent about seven hours with Putin in the course of two one-on-one meetings in Moscow since last month.

In the interview with Carlson, Witkoff recounted his second trip during which Putin gave him a portrait of Trump which he had commissioned “from the leading Russian artist.” Putin also told him how he had prayed for Trump when he had been shot while on the campaign trail last year.

“I came home and delivered that message to our president and delivered the painting and he was clearly touched by it.” Witkoff’s comments described a level of cooperation with Russia now impossible under the current US sanctions regime. But it also made clear the Trump administration’s preference for far-reaching ties with Russia without going into detail about security guarantees for Ukraine or addressing European fears of a militarily resurgent Russia on the continent.

“Thinking about how to integrate their energy policies in the Arctic, share sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas into Europe together,” he told Carlson. “Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the United States are collaboratively doing good things together?” The Trump administration meanwhile is negotiating with Moscow without the participation of its European allies.

Witkoff said Ukraine had given up on joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which would ensure that the nation would be protected by the alliance should it be attacked again by Russia. But he suggested that Kyiv might receive some sort of security guarantees from Europe or the US but didn’t explain how it would work. Ukrainian officials continue to say that they still want to join the alliance one day.

The US decision to halt military aid and intelligence to Ukraine earlier this month sent shock waves through Europe as leaders met to decide how to tackle the prospect of arming Ukraine – or defending themselves – alone. More than a week later, the US resumed military deliveries and intelligence sharing.

Witkoff dismissed Europe’s own efforts at supporting Ukraine as the need “to be like Winston Churchill.” European leaders fear a bad deal that allows Russia to rearm and attack Ukraine in several years could leave countries west of Ukraine vulnerable to Russia’s military. Putin wants to restore a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and had previously demanded the US pull its troops out of Eastern Europe and that NATO troops withdraw from Poland and the Baltic states.

Dow Jones