Donald Trump's choice as his lead diplomat entrusted with dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he is not taking part in negotiations to end the war in Gaza, is getting poor marks with European allies as well as U.S. officials.
According to a report from Politico’s Felicia Schwartz, real estate investor-turned-international negotiator Steve Witkoff is leaving a trail of frustration and fury due to his secretive meetings with Putin, where he has failed to avail himself of the wealth of experts with experience in Russian negotiations and has refused to share the details being discussed.
As the report notes, under Witkoff, “promised follow-up meetings between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have not materialized, ceasefire demands were dropped, threats of tough action have disappeared,” and the White House seems directionless.
According to one U.S. official, “His inexperience shines through, he has the president’s ear, which is evident, but there has been some confusion about what has been said and agreed.”
“He’s kind of a rogue actor,” another administration official admitted. “He talks to all these people, but no one knows what he says in any of these meetings. He will say things publicly but then he changes his mind. It’s hard to operationalize that.”
The report points out that his U.S. is “sparsely staffed” and that he has refused help in understanding the differences between Russia and Ukraine from experts both inside and outside the government. Politico is reporting, “His staff, to the extent he has any, often doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing, according to four people familiar with the dynamics of the office. They said he spends most of his time at his office in the White House, while the rest of his team is at the State Department.”
That led one diplomatic expert to complain, “The thing is, Witkoff isn’t consistently engaged. He will pop in for a visit to Vladimir Putin, say a bunch of stuff, not tell anyone what really happened and then just f--- off to his life again. Meanwhile, the Russians are talking to you about how 'Witkoff says…’ and you don’t know whether they’re right or not, but you can’t get a readout from the Russians.”
The report adds, “Witkoff at times appears to struggle to focus on more than one task at a time, the U.S. official and another one of the people said, adding that when a flurry of developments occurs in one portfolio, say Gaza or Iran or Ukraine, other priorities take a backseat. He is not a voracious consumer of his intelligence briefing materials and doesn’t read them every day, the second person said.”
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