President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said his high-stakes talks with Vladimir Putin were “compelling” — and insisted the Russian leader was open to a “permanent peace” deal with Ukraine.
Witkoff sat down with Putin in St. Petersburg last Friday amid the Trump administration’s efforts to spearhead a deal to end the three-year war.
“I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large,” Witkoff told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday, adding “it took a while for us to get to this place.”
Witkoff said that after five hours of talks, he saw a deal “emerging.”
He added, too, that he saw “a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region too.”
It comes after Trump on Monday described Russia’s assault on Ukraine as “Biden’s war” — before suggesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky played a hand in starting the conflict.
“The War between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening,” he posted on Truth Social.
“President Putin, and everyone else, respected your President! I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR, BUT AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP.”