BBC:
Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as “a posture and a pose” by Donald Trump’s special envoy.
Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.
In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he “liked” the Russian president.
“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said. “He’s super smart.”
Witkoff, who met Putin ten days ago, said the Russian president had been “gracious” and “straight up” with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was “clearly touched by it”.
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was “a false country” and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.
Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both 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 largest issue in that conflict are 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 much of Luhansk and Donetsk.
