Russian President Vladimir Putin said he prayed for “his friend” Donald Trump after the bullet of a murderer touched the ear of the then presidential candidate last year, said the special envoy of the United States Steve Witkoff in an interview on Friday.
Appearing in Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Witkoff praised Putin’s will to discuss how to put an end to war in Ukraine and said it was “absurd” to say that Russia had designs to finally attack other countries in Europe.
Witkoff, who has met with Putin twice, said the messages of Russian President for Trump “during his second visit to Trump” became personal. ” The Russian autocrat told his deep concern after Trump was attacked in an attempt to murder during a campaign stop in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July last year, Witkoff said.
Putin “told me a story … about how when he shot the president, he went to his local church and met his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff said. Putin did it “not because … he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him, and was praying for his friend.”
During the same visit, the Russian president presented a Trump painting that commissioned a Russian artist as a gift for the US president, Witkoff said.
“I got home and gave that message to our president, and delivered the painting, and he clearly moved,” Witkoff said. “So this is the type of connection that we have been able to restore, by the way, a simple word called communication.”
Witkoff ruled out criticism within the reach of the Trump Administration to Putin, saying that the only way to resolve the war in Ukraine is to speak with all the parties in the conflict. He also rejected Putin’s representations as a disastrous actor in which he cannot be trusted.
Witkoff said some people could ask if they should have met with the Russian president because they see Putin as “a bad guy.” But he said: “I don’t consider Putin as a bad boy.”
Wiktoff, a real estate magnate and friend of the president who has become a better Trump diplomatic envoy for Trump.
“I liked it. I thought I was directly with me,” he said, adding that “he was kind to accept me, see me.”
Training, shootings and aircraft shocks
Putin, a former KGB officer who ruled Russia during the last 25 years, has been blamed for the murders of multiple Russian opposition leaders, more recently Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last year.
Mercenary Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash last year, only months after leading the forces of the Wagner group in an abortion against Putin. His short -term rebellion was caused by disagreements about war in Ukraine. No research findings were published after the burning accident, which also killed nine other people.
Boris Nemtsov, once considered the leader of the opposition of Russia and one of Putin’s most fierce critics, was shot dead in 2015, just a few meters from the Kremlin.
And in 2018, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in the United Kingdom with a nervous agent that is believed to be the same Novichok poison he later used in Navalny. Two Russians also allegedly poisoned the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, an open Putin critic who had fled to the United Kingdom
The renowned journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead outside her Moscow department in 2006 after warning journalists in Russia about the risks of challenging Kremlin’s narrative.
Putin blamed Biden
Witkoff said Putin pointed out at his meeting that he and former president Joe Biden did not speak for three years, what Witkoff called a mistake.
“How is a conflict resolved unless we establish trust and good feelings between them?” Witkoff said.
Trump’s envoy said an administration official had warned him in advance that Putin was a former KGB officer. But Witkoff said the background simply meant that Putin was among the elite in the former Soviet Union, since he said that the espionage service recruited highly capable people.
“In the old days, the only people who entered the KGB were the smartest people in the nation,” Witkoff said. “That is the one who entered the KGB. It is a super intelligent guy.”
Putin’s Ukraine invasion of 2022 violated international law, and Russian forces seem to have committed war crimes there, according to European officials, the United Nations and the Biden administration. But Witkoff suggested that the media coverage of war had been distorted and that the conflict could not be completely blamed aside.
“That is a complicated situation that war and all the ingredients that took it,” he said.
The special envoy said the key to resolving the war in Ukraine was Russia’s claim to four Eastern regions in Ukraine: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. He called the theme “The elephant in the room.”
Ukraine opposes the territory, which remains part of the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine.
Russian troops occupy most regions and Moscow has maintained referendums to join Russia, that Western countries and Ukraine have denounced as shams made under repression.
But Witkoff, who struggled to name the four regions in the interview, cited the votes organized in Russian as an indication that people in the area preferred Russian domain.
“They are Russian speaking,” he said. “There have been referendums in which the overwhelming majority of people have indicated that they want to be under Russian domain.”
Witkoff He said it was not clear if Ukraine could accept that territory to Russia and if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could survive politically if he recognized Russian control in the area.
“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories,” Witkoff said. “Will the world recognize that these are Russian territories?”
He added that Russia did not want to absorb all Ukraine and that he already has what he wants, taking the four oriental regions and the Crimean Peninsula.
“The Russians also have what they want,” he said. “So why do they need more?”
