A senior colleague in the Ukrainian President’s Servant of the People Party accused President Donald Trump ally Steve Witkoff of “shameful and shocking statements” and called for his dismissal.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy who has rapidly become his de facto Moscow envoy as well, as Trump bids to get the participants in the Ukraine war to the negotiating table — and keep them there — has been accused of being an agent for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Oleksandr Merezkho, chairman of Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, who is a Member of Parliament from Zelensky’s Servant of the People Party, reacted with hostility to an interview of Witkoff by Tucker Carlson. During the conversation the businessman-turned-negotiator expressed that in deal making, what’s agreed has to work for all parties, and spoke of the referendums held in Russian-annexed regions without also criticising them, something which Ukraine finds unacceptable.
Speaking to Radio Liberty, Zelensky ally Merezkho thundered in response: “Let’s call a spade a spade, these are just shameful, shocking statements… He is relaying Russian propaganda. And I have a question, who is he? Is he a Trump envoy, or maybe he is a Putin envoy?”.
Merezkho questioned whether Witkoff’s comments were informed by “ignorance, naivety, unprofessionalism”, and called on President Trump to “disavow these statements” and to remote Witkoff from the American delegation to the ceasefire talks altogether.
He said: “Of course, we cannot dictate to our American friends who should represent them, but this person should be removed from this delegation, he should not be the president’s representative. Because he is either completely unprofessional or simply repeats Putin’s narratives”.
The Trump White House to date has pursued a policy of seeking to enable Ukraine War ceasefire talks and a possible future peace by treating Russia not, as European capitals generally do — as an unmitigated evil to be defeated — but rather as a nation that can be negotiated with. Hearing this articulated in conversation is obviously jarring to European ears, and most of all to Ukraine, which obviously treats any and all Russian claims to U.N.-recognised Ukrainian territory as absolutely unacceptable.
Indeed, Witkoff told Carlson in the interview: “I’m always trying to put myself in the shoes of the other person, because a good deal has to work for everybody.”
And indeed, it does appear possible that eventual peace negotiations may involve an exchange of land. Ukraine has tacitly acknowledged that day would come for almost a year with its counter-invasion of Russia, seizing territory in the Kursk Oblast to use as a bargaining chip in future talks. President Trump, amid ongoing talks in Saudi Arabia with the United States in shuttle diplomacy mode between Russia and Ukraine said of negotiations: “I think we’ll be talking about land. There’s a lot of land, it’s a lot different than it was before the war as you know. We’ll be talking about land, we’ll be talking about power plants because that’s a big question.”
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