Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as \u201ca posture and a pose\u201d by Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy.<\/p>\n
Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a \u201csimplistic\u201d notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking \u201cwe have all got to be like Winston Churchill\u201d.<\/p>\n
In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he \u201cliked\u201d the Russian president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t regard Putin as a bad guy,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s super smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Witkoff, who met Putin ten days ago, said the Russian president had been \u201cgracious\u201d and \u201cstraight up\u201d 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 \u201cclearly touched by it\u201d.<\/p>\n
During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was \u201ca false country\u201d and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others.\u201d<\/p>\n
The five regions \u2013 or oblasts \u2013 are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.<\/p>\n
Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion. <\/p>\n
He said it was \u201ccorrect\u201d that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: \u201cThe elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. <\/p>\n
The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s something nobody wants to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin has repeatedly said that the \u201croot causes\u201d of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.<\/p>\n