British PM Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as “a posture and a pose” by US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, BBC reports. Steve Witkoff, who is leading US ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, described the UK Prime Minister’s “coalition of the willing” proposal as based on a “simplistic” notion that European leaders think “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill.“
In an interview with Putin-friendly journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he “liked” him and doesn’t “regard Putin as a bad guy.” He added that the Russian leader was “super smart,” “gracious,” and “straight up” during their meeting 10 days ago.
Witkoff claimed that Putin told him he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year, and had allegedly commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was “clearly touched by it.“
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian claims, including that Ukraine was “a false country” and questioned when the world would recognize occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian, BBC says.
Despite leading ceasefire negotiations, Witkoff was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.
“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 are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea. The Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.
During his interview, Witkoff repeated several disputed Kremlin talking points about Russia’s invasion. He claimed Ukrainian troops were surrounded in Kursk, which is false, and asserted that Russia’s sham referendums in occupied regions allegedly showed support for Russian rule. Witkoff also groundlessly suggested that Russian-speaking areas supported Russia. He questioned Russia’s further aggression intentions, asking why it would need to absorb Ukraine after reclaiming five regions and Crimea.
When asked about Starmer’s plans to forge a “coalition of the willing” to provide military security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine, Witkoff dismissed it:
“I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. 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.”
Witkoff claimed 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.
He also outlined how Trump wanted to cooperate with Russia after relations had been normalized:
“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 policies in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?”
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