Plus, Russia will get a bonus : the normalization of relations with the United Stafes 

Ukrainians negotiating with the likes of Witkoff will to all intents and purposes be negotiating with Russia. 

Witkoff has made that crystal clear in his interview with Russia propagandist Tucker Carlson.

Trump envoy dismisses Starmer plan for Ukraine

Mar 23, 2025

James Landale

Diplomatic correspondent•@BBCJLandale

Reporting from Kyiv

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.”

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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.

Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:

• He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine’s government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
• He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held “referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule”. There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
• He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.

Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He said it was “correct” that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: “The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?”

He added: “There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that’s what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that’s something nobody wants to talk about.”

Putin has repeatedly said that the “root causes” of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.

Witkoff said in the Tucker Carlson interview: “Why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine… They have reclaimed these five regions. They have Crimea and they have gotten what they want. So why do they need more?”

Asked about Keir Starmer’s plans to forge a “coalition of the willing” to provide military security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine, Witkoff said: “I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.”

He said a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be “implemented over the next week or so” and “we are not far away” from a full 30-day ceasefire.

He also gave details of how Trump wanted to co-operate with Russia after relations had been normalised. “Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?”

………,,,,

Trump promises full ceasefire in Ukraine “pretty soon” as peace talks focus on “dividing up lands”

The US President is optimistic that a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine is imminent despite obvious challenges in the negotiations.

YEVHENIA MARTYNIUK

21/03/2025

US President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that a complete ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine could be achieved “very soon.”

“I believe we’re going to pretty soon have a full ceasefire and then we’re going to have a contract, and the contract’s being negotiated, the contract in terms of dividing up the lands, etc., etc. It’s being negotiated as we speak,” Trump stated during a White House press briefing.

According to Trump, the “outline” of a future deal to resolve the war has already taken shape. He emphasized that he has had “very good discussions” with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Diplomatic efforts continue to advance, with talks scheduled for Monday in Saudi Arabia between American, Ukrainian, and Russian representatives. Trump previously mentioned plans to discuss “land and power plants” with Putin on 18 March.

According to a report from Kommersant, a Russian media outlet, during a closed session of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Putin reportedly stated that the goal of the negotiations is to secure Russia’s territorial gains. Sources close to the discussions suggested that Putin emphasized the recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Russian-controlled parts of Luhansk and Donetsk (the so-called LNR and DNR), as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, as part of Russia. If these conditions are met, Moscow “will not pursue claims to Odesa or other territories currently under Ukrainian control.”

However, a comprehensive ceasefire has not been established despite these discussions and partial agreements. Following an 18 March call between Trump and Putin, Russia agreed to halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days, but setbacks have emerged, including continued strikes on cities like Odesa.

Russia has also conditioned a broader ceasefire on the cessation of Western military aid to Ukraine, a condition that Ukraine and its allies have rejected. Despite the purported agreements, Zelenskyy remains skeptical of Russia’s commitment to peace, given the ongoing attacks.

Read more:

• Putin outmaneuvers Trump in Ukraine ceasefire negotiations, experts say
• Russia’s “frozen conflict” strategy: Why ceasefire in Ukraine would lead to future invasion
• Trump-Putin peace deal Ukraine 2025: Experts warn of Minsk 3.0 trap