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Donald Trump’s special envoy has torn apart Keir Starmer’s plan to send a peacekeeping force into Ukraine to support a ceasefire.
According to the prime minister, more than 30 countries have joined his “coalition of the willing” and a “significant number” have agreed to deploy troops to Ukraine in a bid to deter Russia in the event of a peace deal.
Yet, Starmer has maintained this can only happen with a US security guarantee – which the White House has so far refused to provide.
And it has now emerged that Trump’s own team are not in favour of the UK plan at all.
Speaking to pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Steve Witkoff described the prime minister’s plan as a “posture”, “a pose”, and “simplistic”.
The Trump representative, who leading the US ceasefire negotiations, 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.”
Witkoff’s remarks come days after a Russian official publicly called Starmer’s plan a “bluff”.
The envoy also seemed unable to name the five Ukrainian regions which have been annexed by Russia during the interview, even though sovereignty over the areas are set to be one of the most contentious issues in the peace talks.
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.”
Russia has annexed Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea over the last decade. Donbas is the collective regional name for Luhask and Donetsk.
Witkoff then promoted more baseless Russian claims, including that Moscow is fully in charge of these areas when some are only partially occupied.
He said: “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 continued: “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.
“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 got what they want. So why do they need more?”
Witkoff also claimed a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be “implemented over he next week or so” and “we are not far away” from full 30-day truce.
Yet Vladimir Putin reportedly told business leaders earlier this month that he expects negotiations to be “slow and difficult”.
The envoy, who met Putin earlier this month, also piled praise on the Russian president.
He said: “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. He’s super smart.”
Witkoff claimed the Russian leader was “gracious” and “straight up” with him, and had prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt against him.
Putin has even commissioned a portrait of Trump as a gift, Witkoff claimed, a move which reportedly pleased the US president.
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