Territorial exchange that no one promised: how Witkoff confused everyone with disinformation after meeting with Putin
Kyiv • UNN
Steve Witkoff, special representative of the US President, after his visit to Moscow, misinformed Americans and Ukrainians regarding Putin's proposals. This caused confusion due to Witkoff's lack of diplomatic experience.
The special representative of the President of the United States of America, Steve Witkoff, after visiting Moscow, got confused himself about what the Russians told him, and confused Americans and Ukrainians with his disinformation. This is reported by the Reuters agency, according to UNN.
Details
It is noted that shortly after meeting with the Kremlin leader Putin in Moscow on August 6, US special envoy Steve Witkoff reported important news to Donald Trump: the Russian president is ready to offer significant territorial concessions to end the war in Ukraine.
After Witkoff read the report to the US president, Trump welcomed his envoy's "great progress" and agreed to hold a historic summit with Putin, indicating that a territorial exchange was being discussed.
But diplomatic efforts soon turned into confusion.
During a phone call on August 7 with several European leaders, Witkoff stated that Putin was ready to withdraw troops from Ukrainian regions — Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — in exchange for Kyiv ceding the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This was reported by a source familiar with the negotiations.
The proposal shocked many participants in the phone call, as it sharply deviated from their own assessments of Putin's position, said four people familiar with the discussions, including American and European officials who asked to remain anonymous.
The next day, Witkoff seemed to change his version. According to one source, during a phone call organized by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio with European national security advisers, the special representative stated that Putin was not actually offering to withdraw troops from the two mentioned regions.
Instead, American officials indicated during the conversation that Putin had signaled smaller concessions to Washington, including that he would not demand official Western recognition of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as Russian.
As it turned out, Witkoff made a mistake in the negotiations, as he has no experience in diplomacy. The real estate magnate violated standard protocol by going to the meeting without a State Department note-taker and thus remained without a record of Putin's exact proposals.
As Reuters writes, Trump makes some foreign policy decisions relying more on trusted individuals and intuition than on traditional diplomatic channels and the discussion process typical of most previous administrations. Trump's critics argue that his overly confident manner also created confusion within the administration and among allies.
Some American officials, including Kellogg, were frustrated that Witkoff, after his meeting in Moscow, introduced conflicting new information into the discussion at a time when the US had finally begun to take a tougher stance on Russia.
Witkoff, a close friend of Trump, has received praise for his work. However, some American and European officials are concerned that the Russians are taking advantage of his lack of experience at the negotiating table.
Within hours of Witkoff's meeting in Moscow on August 6, both he and Trump stated that they believed a breakthrough had occurred. The next day, Trump said he might soon meet with the Russian leader, and later stated that a territorial exchange would be needed to end the war.
According to several American and European officials, Europeans spent the following days trying to find out from their American counterparts exactly what Putin had told Witkoff. Some senior US officials, including Kellogg and Rubio, were also initially unaware of some details of Witkoff's meeting.
On August 13, Ukrainian officials informed senior German officials that, according to their intelligence, Putin planned to use the summit with Trump to buy time before a potential Russian offensive in October or November, a German source familiar with the warning said.
Despite the Alaska summit, the war in Ukraine has not moved closer to an end, said Kurt Volker, former US Ambassador to NATO, who served as US Special Representative for Ukraine during Trump's first term.
We are exactly where we were before Trump took office. Russia has not changed its position one iota. The war continues... We do not have a clear strategy on how to make Putin stop the war
He expressed optimism that Trump would eventually put strong pressure on Putin to change his position through tougher economic sanctions and military support for Ukraine.
"I think Trump is the embodiment of Churchill's quote: 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possible alternatives.' Trump will truly have no choice," Volker noted.