Trump’s foreign envoy touts Kremlin talking points, in interview that will alarm Europe

By Christian Edwards, CNN

(CNN) — US President Donald Trump’s foreign envoy praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, struggled to recall the names of four occupied Ukrainian regions, and echoed a swath of Kremlin talking points in a remarkable podcast interview that will alarm officials in Kyiv and the West.

In a long interview with podcast host Tucker Carlson, Witkoff – who revealed Russia’s President Putin had commissioned a portrait of Trump and sent it to him – said the administration was making progress “that no one thought was possible” with Russia, but that issues of four captured territories still need ironing out and posed the biggest obstacle to resolving the conflict.

The four mainland regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – were illegally annexed during Russia’s full-scale invasion and Kyiv vehemently opposes giving them up, but Witkoff on several occasions implied that Russia had a right to capture the land.

The Kremlin has since staged referenda on joining Russia in those regions, which were widely dismissed as a sham by the international community, but which Witkoff claimed was evidence of their desire to split from Ukraine.

“They’re Russian-speaking,” Witkoff said of the four eastern regions. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”

CNN has previously reported that voting in the regions has been carried out at gunpoint, with one resident saying the results were a foregone conclusion.

“I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions: Donbas, Crimea. You know the names,” Witkoff said, seemingly unable to recall the territories. Carlson prompted him by saying “Lugansk,” the Russian transliteration for Luhansk, to which Witkoff replied: “Lugansk, and there’s two others.”

Witkoff said the “constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede… with regard to territory” had become “the elephant in the room” during negotiations. Talks are set to resume Monday in Saudi Arabia, with US officials set to meet officials from both Russia and Ukraine.

“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?” Witkoff asked. “Can (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict.”

Zelensky stressed last weekend that Ukraine’s position “is that we do not recognize the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian.”

The US raised the issue during talks with Ukrainian delegates in the Saudi city of Jeddah, Zelensky said, adding that he hopes the question can be resolved during later peace talks, rather than discussions over an initial ceasefire. “It is dragging out the process for a long, long time,” he said.

‘Gracious’ Putin

Witkoff said he was impressed by how “gracious” the Russian leader has been during the pair’s discussions, praising him as “smart” and “straightforward.”

He dismissed longstanding concerns across Europe that Putin would seek to invade further territory if given the opportunity. “This sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are gonna march across Europe. I think that’s preposterous,” he said. “We have something called NATO that we did not have in World War II.”

Asked by Carlson whether he felt the Russians want to “march across Europe,” Witkoff replied: “100% not.”

European capitals have repeatedly stressed that Putin would not intend to stop his territorial ambitions at Ukraine, and those fears prompted Sweden and Finland to join NATO after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Before meeting Putin in Moscow, Witkoff said someone in the Trump administration warned him to “watch it, because he’s an ex-KGB guy,” referring to Putin’s former career in the Soviet Union’s security agency.

Witkoff said he downplayed the person’s fears, saying Putin’s background in the agency was a measure of 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 recalled saying.

“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said, saying it was “gracious” of the Russian leader to receive him in Moscow for talks earlier this month.

That meeting “got personal,” he said, recalling how Putin “had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist,” which Witkoff took home to the president.

Witkoff said also that, following the assassination attempt against Trump in September, Putin said that he “went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed” for Trump, “not because he… could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him.”

Trump was “clearly touched” by Putin’s story and the portrait, Witkoff said.

Witkoff implied that resolving the war in Ukraine could lead to cooperation on a broader range of issues, and that the two sides were thinking about “integrating their energy policies in the Arctic,” sharing sea lanes, collaborating on artificial intelligence and sending liquefied natural gas “into Europe together.”

“Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the United States are doing, collaboratively, good things together?” he asked.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.