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US President Donald Trump is putting real estate developer and special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff at the center of talks with Russia over the war in Ukraine.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he has appointed Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to lead negotiations.
Trump’s Russian and Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, was conspicuously absent from the list, although the State Department announced shortly after Trump’s statement that Kellogg is headed to Munich, Brussels, and Kyiv for talks with key US allies.
Kellogg’s proposal to end the war while arming Ukraine has drawn skepticism from the incoming Pentagon team, while Witkoff — who worked on the Gaza ceasefire — is considered the dealmaking hot hand (the White House insists Kellogg remains involved).
Witkoff was central to negotiations with the Kremlin to bring back Marc Fogel, an American jailed in Russia since 2021, in exchange for Russian cybercriminal Alexander Vinnik. Witkoff’s flight to secure Fogel’s release was the first known trip to Moscow by a senior US official since then-CIA director Bill Burns travelled to the Russian capital in November 2021.
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Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy Wednesday as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Ukrainian NATO membership, drawing criticism from ex-Biden officials and praise from restraint-oriented experts.
Yehor Cherniev, a Ukrainian lawmaker who leads the country’s delegation to the NATO parliamentary assembly, told Semafor that Hegseth’s statement had been met with “regret” in Ukraine: “For the sake of this membership, we were forced to go through pain, suffering, and the death of our citizens. And if such promises were initially unfulfillable by the West, they should not have been given to us from the very beginning.”
Short of a NATO membership, Ukraine will need significant support to build a stronger and more capable military to deter Russia from future aggression, former Ukrainian defense secretary Andriy Zagorodnyuk said. “Membership in NATO would be cheaper.”