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Trump envoy rejects Starmer's Ukraine plan

Politiko 2025-03-23 11:36:21

Trump envoy rejects Starmer's Ukraine plan

Sir Keir Starmer's plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been rejected by Donald Trump's special envoy.

Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a "simplified" notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking "we should all be like Winston Churchill", writes the BBC . 

In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he liked the Russian president.

"I don't consider Putin a bad guy," he said. "He's super smart."

Witkoff, who met with Putin 10 days ago, said the Russian president had been "direct" with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt on him last year. He also said that Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was "clearly moved by it."

During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was "a fake country" and asked when the world would recognize occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.

Witkoff is leading U.S. ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.

He said: "The biggest issue in that conflict is these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names, and there are two others."

The five regions - or oblasts - are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes most of Luhansk and Donetsk.

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