White House envoy Steve Witkov praised Vladimir Putin as trustworthy in glorious terms, saying that Russian leaders told him that he prayed for his “friend” President Donald Trump when he was shot dead.
Witkov met with Putin for hours in Moscow last week, telling the media during discussions with debate on laying a pathway to end Russian wars in Ukraine.
In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to view Putin as not a “bad guy” and said the Russian president is the “great” leader trying to end a fatal three-year conflict with Moscow's Kiyif.
“I liked him. I thought he was straight to me,” Witkov said in an interview aired Friday.
“I don't think of Putin as a bad guy. It's the complicated situation, that war and all the material that led to it.”
He also described the “personal” element of the argument that reminded Putin of his reaction to his attempted assassination in July 2024 in Trump as Republicans held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“When the president was shot, he went to his local church to meet with the priest and talked about what he had prayed for the president,” Witkov said.
“Because he was able to become president of America, not because he had a friendship with him and prayed for his friends.”
Putin commissioned “a beautiful portrait of President Trump from a major Russian artist” and asked the envoy to take it back to Trump, Witkov added.
“It was a very elegant moment.”
Witkoff's praise for the president, which the US has long seen as an authoritarian enemy, underscores a dramatic shift in Washington's approach to dealing with the Kremlin since Trump took office as second president.
Witkov also said Ukrainian Voldymir Zelensky faces tough choices first, and the president should recognize that it is time to “make a deal” with Moscow.
Zelensky “is in a very difficult situation, but he is opposed to the nuclear state,” Witkov said. “So he needs to know he's going to fall to the ground, and now is the best time for him to get the deal done.”
Witkov's comments were delivered on an inherently friendly ground. Carlson is a controversial former Fox News star who conducted what was widely considered to be a rare but soft interview with Putin last year.
Carlson is also a leading propagandist of the American Pro Kremlin story.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
