President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East botched a sitdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.
During the Wednesday meeting, Special Envoy Witkoff mistook Putin’s demand for a “peaceful withdrawal” of Ukrainian forces from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as a proposed concession from Putin to pull back Russian troops in the regions, according to German tabloid Bild.
“Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” an anonymous Ukrainian official told the paper.
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After the meeting, Trump said Russia could withdraw from the two regions in exchange for Donetsk, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But in a Thursday phone call between Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and European leaders—during which Witkoff appeared “overwhelmed” and “incompetent,” Bild reported—the special envoy said Russia would withdraw from those regions and “freeze the front line.”
Further complicating the call was the fact that Witkoff and Vance only wanted to inform European officials about the Trump administration’s progress in the negotiations, whereas Rubio thought the Europeans should be further involved in the ongoing talks, according to Bild.
The confusion led European leaders to request another call Friday to clarify the proposal.
“This is deeply damaging incompetence,” Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration, posted on X. “Witkoff should finally start taking a note taker from the U.S. embassy for future meetings. That’s how professional diplomacy works.”
Witkoff’s meeting with Putin has muddied the waters ahead of Trump’s own historic face-to-face with his Russian counterpart in Alaska scheduled for Friday, during which the president is expected to make controversial proposals for “territory swapping” between Kyiv and Moscow.
Matthew Whitaker, Trump’s ambassador to NATO, qualified the conditions of those proposals during a Sunday interview with CNN, saying that “no big chunks or sections are going to be just given that haven’t been fought for or earned on the battlefield.”
Europe and Ukraine have pushed back against those terms, insisting that any peace deal should respect Ukrainian sovereignty and guarantee its security without compromising on the Eastern European country’s aspirations for NATO membership.
Russia, meanwhile, continues to maintain a maximalist stance, seeking recognition of annexed Ukrainian territories and opposing Kyiv’s accession into the defense alliance.
