WASHINGTON: White House envoy Steve Witkoff has showered Russian President Vladimir Putin with praise and said the leader had told the US official that he had prayed for his "friend" US President Donald Trump when he was shot while campaigning in Philadelphia last year for the presidential election.
The envoy met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks — which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia's war in Ukraine — were constructive and "solution-based."
In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to regard Putin as not a "bad guy," and that the Russian president was a "great" leader seeking to end Moscow's deadly three-year conflict with Kyiv.
"I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me," Witkoff said in the interview aired Friday.
"I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it."
He also described a "personal" element of the discussion in which Putin recalled his reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024 as the Republican held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Putin "told me a story... about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president," Witkoff said.
"Not because [...] he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend."
Putin had commissioned a "beautiful portrait of President Trump from a leading Russian artist," and asked the envoy to take it home to Trump, Witkoff added.
"It was such a gracious moment."
Witkoff's gushing praise of a president long seen by the United States as an autocratic adversary highlights the dramatic turn in Washington's approach to dealings with the Kremlin since Trump took office for a second presidential term.
Witkoff also said Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky was facing tough choices ahead and that the president should recognise it is time for him to "get a deal done" with Moscow.
Zelensky is "in a very, very difficult situation, but he's up against a nuclear nation," Witkoff said. "So he's got to know that he's going to get ground down. Now is the best time for him to get a deal done."
Witkoff's comments essentially were delivered on 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 has also been a leading propagator of pro-Kremlin narratives in the United States.
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