President Trump to speak with Putin about ceasefire negotiations
President Donald Trump said he will speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin about potential ceasefire negotiations.
WASHINGTON − Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., blasted recent comments on Russia and Ukraine by special envoy Steve Witkoff as “insane,” accusing President Donald Trump’s real estate mogul friend of “negotiating for the other side.”
In a Friday interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Witkoff bandied Russian talking points used to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “super smart guy” who he takes “at his word.”
Speaking to CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Monday morning, Moulton, a former Marine, said it was “insane that you have a U.S. negotiator taking the side of our enemy.”
“He’s literally negotiating for the other side, negotiating for the aggressor, negotiating for the violator of international law,” Moulton said.
Witkoff has taken a leading role in the Trump administration’s ongoing talks with Russia and Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war, now in its fourth year. In the hour-plus interview with Carlson, he said he doesn’t see Putin as “a bad guy.”
Coming two days before U.S. talks to end the war restarted in Saudi Arabia, Witkoff’s comments pointed to a unprecedented shift in the U.S. stance towards Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.
Witkoff visited Putin earlier this month in a meeting that “got personal,” he told Carlson. Putin commissioned a portrait of Trump from a “leading Russian artist” that Witkoff delivered to the White House, he said.
“It was such a gracious moment,” he added.
After Trump was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt last summer, Putin “prayed” for Trump, Witkoff said, “not because he was the President of the United States or could become the President of the United States,” but because “he was praying for his friend.”
Witkoff implied Russia had legitimate claim to four territories of Ukraine that it illegally seized during the invasion – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
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Taking up a talking point brandished by Russia to legitimize its invasion, he said residents of those territories had voted in favor of Russian annexation. Those elections, held in September 2022, months after Russia invaded, were widely denounced as a sham by the U.S. and its European allies.
“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories,” Witkoff said. “The question is…will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?”
Trump has strengthened ties with Putin, even as he has berated and criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, provoking alarm from lawmakers and Ukraine’s European allies.
He cut off U.S. aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine for around 10 days after an Oval Office meeting with the Ukrainian leader late last month devolved into a shouting match in which Trump berated him for “gambling with World War III.”
Trump has called Putin directly several times – an about-face from former President Joe Biden, who sought to ostracize Putin on the world stage and never dealt with him directly after the Feb. 2022 invasion. Last week, Putin agreed on a call with Trump to pause Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days.