Parroting Putin and Trump, Witkoff Says Russia Was ‘Provoked’ Into Invading Ukraine
A top Trump official is claiming Russia “was provoked” into invading Ukraine, repeating talking points used by President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The war didn’t need to happen,” U.S. envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “It was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO. The president has spoken about this. That didn’t need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians.”
In a separate interview, Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, refused to state outright that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, telling Fox News’ Shannon Bream on Sunday that it was “fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.”
McGill political science professor Maria Popova wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the claims that Ukraine was somehow on the verge of joining NATO immediately before the war are untrue. “All conversations ended in 2008. NATO membership for Ukraine was never on the table and the Russians knew it,” she said. “In winter 2022, Putin repeatedly ignored attempts by the west to reassure him [Ukraine] isn’t getting in.”
The administration officials’ statements align with Trump’s recent words on the war that shocked European leaders. Trump, talking to reporters last week, directed his remarks toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it… You should have never started it. You should have made a deal,” Trump said.
U.S. and Russian negotiators have engaged in talks in Saudi Arabia about a possible peace deal to end the war. Ukraine was not included in the meetings. Zelensky has said he will not accept a U.S.-Russia agreement created without Ukraine involvement.
“I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine,” he said last week.
Putin has also blamed Ukraine and the west for the conflict. In 2023, Putin alleged that Ukraine “has become hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
“They started the war. And we used the force in order to stop it,” he said in a speech.
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, and in 2022, the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia now occupies “roughly 20 percent of the country after gaining over four thousand square kilometers of territory in 2024,” according to the Council of Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker.
Witkoff said he recently met privately with Putin, part of what he said are the administration’s “trust-building” efforts with Russia, a reversal of the Biden administration’s attempts to isolate the superpower and its authoritarian leader. Earlier this month, Putin and Trump had a phone call that Trump described as “lengthy and highly productive.”
Witkoff said that he was “intent on carrying a message from the president to President Putin” and that he was advised that Putin “had something for me to transmit back to the president.”
“The meeting ended, I looked at my watch, and it was close to three and a half hours that we were in there and hopefully that that suggests that a lot of good things got accomplished,” Witkoff said, later adding, “Now it will be up to President Putin and President Trump to work something out. And I think they’re going to be successful.”
When asked for specific concessions Russia was prepared to make in a peace deal, Witkoff could not name any.
“I think, in any peace deal, each side is going to make concessions, whether it’s territorial concessions, whether it’s economic concessions,” he said noncommittally. “I think there’s a whole array of things that happen in a deal, and you will see concessions from both sides.”
Ukraine last week rejected a deal proposed by the U.S. for minerals in exchange for support in the war, but Witkoff predicted the agreement will be finalized in the coming week. Zelensky has asked for security guarantees and improved financial terms to be included in the deal.
“I don’t want something that 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” he said Sunday.
“I expect to see a deal signed this week,” Witkoff said. “You saw President Zelensky waver in his commitment towards that a week ago… President [Trump] sent a message to him. He’s not wavering anymore.”
Zelensky said Sunday that he would be open to resigning if it brought peace or NATO membership to Ukraine.
“If it’s peace for Ukraine, if I really need to leave my post then I’m ready,” he said. “I can exchange it for NATO, if there are such conditions.”
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