by Alexander J. Motyl
03/27/25
The Hill
The real estate developer Steve Witkoff, whom President Trump made his plenipotentiary in foreign conflicts, is either foolish, mendacious or naive — or perhaps all of the above. Whatever the case, he has no business negotiating something as complex and complicated as a putative peace between an imperialist Russia and its victim, Ukraine.
In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Witkoff made a whole series of astoundingly absurd claims. I’ll discuss only three: that Russia’s illegitimately elected president Vladimir Putin is not “a bad guy”; that Putin prayed for Trump after the failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last July; and that Russia has “reclaimed” the territories it currently occupies.
Let’s start with the third claim. One “reclaims” things one once possessed and “claims” things one wants to possess. The Russian Federation never possessed these territories; neither did its predecessor, the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. The Russian Empire did possess them, but only after taking them from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian Cossacks.
Either Witkoff doesn’t understand what that silly little prefix “re-” means, or he’s legitimizing Putin’s expansion into all the territories once held by imperial Russia. Since Witkoff is “100 percent” certain that Russia doesn’t want to “absorb Ukraine,” we’re left with his indifference to grammar.
All one can say is heaven forbid that such a special envoy should have a hand in producing a diplomatically portentous document that could affect the lives of millions.
Further evidence of Witkoff’s inability to see important details is his confusion over how many and which regions are at issue. At one point, he speaks of “five regions.” At another, he speaks of “four regions, Donbas, Crimea, and there’s two others.” No, Mr. Witkoff, what you presumably meant was Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, in addition to Crimea. Such elementary ignorance is breathtaking — and Witkoff, if he’s serious about peace, should recuse himself immediately.
And then there’s the bit about Putin going to his local church to pray for “his friend” Trump. Witkoff appears to believe that the godless former Communist who served in the criminal KGB, a bloody organization little different from Nazi Germany’s SS, truly believes in God and would have knelt in prayer on behalf of Trump. Witkoff is either displaying naivete, ignorance or both.
For not only is Putin affiliated with and a product of the Soviet secret police, but his attitude toward religion is one of total expedience. The Russian Orthodox Church fully supports his
genocidal war against Ukrainians, and it makes perfect sense for a dictator in need of any form of legitimacy to seek an alliance with Patriarch Kirill, allegedly a former KGB agent.
One hopes that even Witkoff must suspect that Putin’s religiosity is about as skin-deep as that of Trump, who claims to be anointed by God while being unable to quote his favorite passages from his favorite book, the Bible.
Witkoff sinks even lower with his claim that Putin is not “a bad guy.” Such a bizarre statement bespeaks a complete moral breakdown. Perhaps worse, it suggests an inability to see and comprehend the perfectly obvious.
Forget Putin’s KGB career and disregard his genocidal war against Ukraine and Ukrainians. Focus only on what he’s done to Russia and Russians. Putin has built a fascist dictatorship. He destroyed civil society and the free media in Russia. He ordered the killing of numerous political opponents, ruined the Russian economy and sacrificed 900,000 young Russians to an early death or incapacitation. He has transformed Russia into a rogue state. If he were running for president in the U.S. on that record, even Trump would win in a landslide.
But note Witkoff’s use of the indefinite article, “a.” In saying that Putin isn’t “a bad guy,” he could be implying that Putin is a nice guy, a regular guy, a decent guy. But he could also be referencing American culture and saying that Putin isn’t “the bad guy” — namely the villain or criminal mastermind one encounters in cop shows and movies.
This second interpretation effectively underlines what Trump has been saying all along: that Putin isn’t just his friend, Putin is America’s friend. Witkoff evidently agrees, which disqualifies him from being a neutral broker in any Russo-Ukrainian negotiation. Ukrainians know that they’re dealing not with one Putin, but two.
Unfortunately, the “American Putin” isn’t just indifferent to genocide and war but actually supports them by supporting the Russian Putin. Equally disturbing, the “American Putin” —Witkoff and his boss — appears to be indifferent to details, which as we know is where the devil resides. At least the Ukrainians now know what they’re dealing with.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”