Steve Witkoff made a series of revalations during an interview with Tucker Carlson
US special envoy Steve Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin as he revealed details about their negotiations for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
As US officials prepare for peace talks in Saudi Arabia, Witkoff gave insights into Donald Trump‘s relationship with Putin in an extended interview with podcaster and former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson.
Witkoff’s trip to Moscow preceded a highly anticipated phone call on Tuesday between Putin and Trump, during which the Russian President declined to agree to a full 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.
Instead, Putin offered to stop attacks on Ukraine’s power grid in exchange for a pause on retaliatory strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector.
However, both sides have since accused the other of violating the current agreement. A Russian drone strike killed a family of three in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine on Friday.
Here, The i Paper takes a look at the bombshell revelations from the interview.
Putin is ‘gracious’ and ‘smart’
Witkoff, the Middle East envoy who also plays a key role in talks with Russia, piled praise on Putin and said it was “gracious” of the Russian leader to receive him in Moscow for talks earlier this month.
He said he “liked” him, adding: “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. He’s super smart.”
Before meeting him in Moscow, Witkoff said someone in Trump’s administration told him to “watch it, because he’s an ex-KGB guy” – a reference to Putin’s former career in the Soviet Union’s security agency.
FILE - U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff attends and interview after participating in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. national aecurity adviser Mike Waltz, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18, 2025. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)
Witkoff downplayed these fears and said Putin’s former career indicated his intelligence.
“In the old days, the only people who went into the KGB were the smartest people in the nation… He’s a super smart guy,” he said.
Putin commissioned portrait of Trump
Witkoff said the meeting “got personal”, and Putin told him he prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year.
The Russian President said he went to his local church and met with a priest after hearing Trump had been shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania last year, according to Witkoff’s account.
Putin prayed not because Trump was a US presidential candidate, but because he “had a friendship with him, and he was praying for his friend”.
Witkoff said Putin gave him a “beautiful portrait” of Trump he had commissioned from a “leading Russian artist” and asked him to bring it back to the White House.
Trump “was clearly touched by it”, he said.
“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to re-establish through, by the way, a simple word called communication,” he added.
US envoy unable to recall names of Ukrainian territories in negotiations
Witkoff was unable to remember the names of the Ukrainian territories that he is negotiating with Russia over.
“The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others,” he said.
The five regions – or oblasts – of Ukraine that are either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea.
‘Elephant in room’ is whether Ukraine will cede occupied regions
Witkoff said it was “correct” from the Kremlin’s perspective that the partially occupied territories in Ukraine were now part of Russia.
“The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?
“Can (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict.”
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a press conference in Kyiv on March 15, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appointed an official delegation to represent Kyiv in any possible peace talks to end the more than three-year war with Russia, according to a presidential decree published on March 15. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP) (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (Photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP)
Witkoff added: “There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that’s what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that’s something nobody wants to talk about.”
Zelensky stressed last weekend that Ukraine’s position “is that we do not recognise the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian”.
He said he hoped the question could be resolved during later peace talks rather than discussions over an initial ceasefire.
Witkoff said a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be “implemented over the next week or so” and “we are not far away” from a full 30-day ceasefire.
The White House hopes an initial ceasefire can pave the way for more talks and an agreement for a permanent ceasefire.
Disputed referenda cited as ‘evidence’ of desire to split from Ukraine
Russia has staged referenda on joining the country in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Witkoff claimed as evidence of their desire to split from Ukraine.
“They’re Russian-speaking,” he said. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
Kyiv and the international community have widely disputed the legitimacy of the referenda, and CNN reported that voting in the regions has been carried out at gunpoint.
There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this does not indicate support for Russia.
Ukraine has ‘agreed to hold presidential election’
Even though Kyiv declared that elections were neither logistically possible nor constitutionally legal during wartime, Witkoff claimed that Ukraine’s leadership agreed to hold a presidential election.
Asked if there would be elections, Witkoff replied: “Yes … They’ve agreed to it.”
UK’s plans for Ukraine dismissed as ‘simplistic’
Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine was dismissed by the envoy.
“It’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic,” he said.
“There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.”
US plans to ‘collaborate’ with Russia after ceasefire
Witkoff said Trump wanted to co-operate with Russia after the end of the Ukraine war.
“Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?” he said.