Special envoy Steve Witkoff says the White House extracted critical wins from its Friday summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, even as President Donald Trump failed to walk away with the ceasefire he was loudly advocated for.
Security guarantees offering Ukraine "Article 5-like protections" are the real prize, Witkoff told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday. They're "game-changing," he said.
"We didn't think that we were anywhere close to agreeing to Article Five protection from the United States in legislative enshrinement within the Russian Federation, not to go after any other territory when the peace deal is codified," Witkoff said on CNN's "State of the Union."
He continued, saying, "We got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee."
Trump spent much of the week ahead of the Alaska meeting issuing threats over what could happen if Russia wasn't serious about a ceasefire. In the end, Trump's confab with Putin, in which the U.S. president feted his Russian counterpart with a red carpet and clapped as he approached, didn't even result in concrete plans for a follow-up meeting.
Still, Witkoff is optimistic.
"We're on the path for the first time," he told Tapper. "We are seeing accommodation more than we've seen in the past, certainly more than we saw in the last administration. And that's encouraging. Now we have to build on that."
Zelenskyy will travel to Washington — alongside a number of major European leaders — to meet with Trump on Monday.
The president has warmed to the idea of playing at least some role in maintaining peace and deterring future Russian invasions into Ukraine after the war, telling European leaders in a virtual meeting last week that he was open to contributing security guarantees to Kyiv in a final settlement.
Trump's foreign policy has long been marked by skepticism of NATO allies. He previously balked at the idea of coming to the defense of a NATO country "if they don't pay," signaling he would consider abandoning a key part of the NATO security pact if members don’t spend more on defense.
"There are numerous definitions of Article 5," Trump told reporters en route to the NATO summit in June.
Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence told Tapper that Witkoff’s description of the security guarantees floated during the meeting was “encouraging.” But he cautioned the White House to “remember the bad guy here is Putin” throughout its conversations on ending the war.
“I served alongside the president for four years. I know his style in dealing with these dictators,” Pence said. “It's the velvet glove. But I think the hammer needs to come and it needs to come immediately.”
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