President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff, said he is “very optimistic” that the United States will be able to broker a full ceasefire and ultimately a peace deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor who President Trump tapped to serve as the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East and the de facto envoy to Moscow, indicated that he believes that there is a deal to be had to end the over three-year war in Eastern Europe that “everybody can live with”.
“I believe that we have made more progress in this Russian-Ukraine conflict in the last eight weeks than anyone thought we would ever make,” Witkoff said.
Speaking ahead of upcoming talks with both the Russians and the Ukrainians in Riyadh, the U.S. diplomat said that in addition to the partial ceasefire on attacks against energy infrastructure, he expects an agreement on “reinstituting the Black Sea moratorium on maritime” strikes within the “next week or so”.
“That’s big stuff, really big stuff. What’s the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal is a 30-day ceasefire, during which time we discuss a permanent ceasefire. We’re not far away from that,” Witkoff predicted.
“There’s all kinds of good, positive talk coming out of Russia about their willingness to consider all of these different things. And Zelensky had a wonderful conversation with the president… and I think that indicates that they’ve got some degree of flexibility in the way that they’ve been thinking about finishing up this conflict,” he continued.
“So I am not to sound like a forever optimist, but I am very, very optimistic that we’re going to be able to bring the two sides together. We have narrowed the issues so considerably, so I’m optimistic.”
However, Witkoff acknowledged that considerable issues still need to be resolved before a full ceasefire can be agreed upon, particularly given the current state of the frontline.
According to Witkoff, during his meeting with Vladimir Putin earlier this month, the Russian leader questioned what he would be expected to do in battlefield scenarios where Russia has an advantage, but the Ukrainian forces refuse to concede defeat.
This may be particularly critical in the Russian region of Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise counter-invasion last summer but have reportedly become encircled by the Russian army. Ukraine’s foothold within mainland Russia was mooted as a key bargaining chip for Kyiv in any peace talks.
Yet Witkoff noted that this is just one example of up to 90 different engagements between Russian and Ukrainian forces along the 2,000-kilometre border that need to be resolved before a ceasefire can occur, with “each one needing a separate conversation.”
“That’s what has to happen for a ceasefire. And yet, we’re talking about it. That’s a big, big deal,” he said.
While the U.S. diplomat said that he believes Ukraine acknowledges that NATO membership will be off the table in any deal, a key sticking point will be whether Kyiv is willing to cede the territories it lost and which are now controlled by Russia.
Two main roadblocks in the way of such an acknowledgement are the Ukrainian constitution — which prohibits the government from ceding any land from its 1991 borders — and the political difficulties for President Zelensky if the land was officially lost under his watch, which Witkoff questioned if he could withstand.
“There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that’s the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War II. That’s something that nobody wants to talk about,” Witkoff said.
“The question is, will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories? Will it end up? Can Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict.”
Additionally, the Trump envoy was critical of European leaders for giving Zelensky and Ukraine a false belief that they could win the war against the much larger foe. Furthermore, Witkoff derided Europe’s hawkish perspective, including Paris and London’s suggestion to send a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force to Ukraine, which he described as “posture and prose.”
“I think there’s this sort of notion of, we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill. The Russians are going to march across Europe. I think that’s preposterous, by the way. We have something called NATO that we did not have in World War II,” he said.
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