Vance, Putin envoy defend Witkoff from ‘warmongers’ in Politico piece
Vice President Vance, along with a top Kremlin negotiator and a chorus of critics allied with President Trump, attacked Politico on Friday over an article about special envoy Steve Witkoff’s “struggles to manage” peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
“This story from Politico is journalistic malpractice. But it’s more than that: it’s a foreign influence operation meant to hurt the administration and one of our most effective members,” Vance wrote Friday on the social platform X.
Witkoff has been Trump’s interlocutor in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting Moscow at least five times in the past six months.
Following the president’s summit with Putin in Alaska earlier this month, Witkoff said Russia had agreed to a Western security presence in Ukraine, which he called a significant concession. However, over the past two weeks, Russia has repeatedly said it will tolerate no such thing, and Moscow has resisted Trump’s demand for Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet face-to-face.
The Politico article quotes anonymous sources saying Witkoff’s “inexperience shines through,” calling him a “rogue actor” who “will say things publicly but then he changes his mind,” and that 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.”
Sources also say the former real estate developer is overstretched, given his vast diplomatic portfolio, which also includes the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Vance complained that the news outlet quoted anonymous critics but left out on-the-record statements from senior Trump officials, questioning the motives of Felicia Schwartz, the diplomatic correspondent at Politico who authored the piece.
“To set the record straight: Steve Witkoff is an invaluable member of our team. He did not mislead anyone on what the Russians told him and what the Russians conceded. (Trust me, I’ve seen the intel.),” he wrote.
The Hill reached out to Politico for comment.
Others in Trump World who jumped to Witkoff’s defense included his son Donald Trump Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich. The Russia envoy responded to Vance’s note, saying, “This statement from our amazing Vice President speaks for itself.”
Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund who has led Russia’s delegation in talks on Ukraine, wrote on X that “Fake articles lie exactly as @JDVance confirms.”
“Steve Witkoff is under media attack by warmongers who want to derail peace. … Lies will fail, Peace will win,” he wrote, with an emoji of a dove.
Russia has killed nearly 14,000 Ukrainian civilians since it invaded Ukraine more than three years ago, according to the United Nations. This week it launched one of its largest aerial attacks of the war, killing at least 21 people in the capital Kyiv.
Trump had previously called for an immediate ceasefire while the two sides negotiate a permanent end to the war but dropped that demand following his meeting with Putin on Aug. 15, expressing optimism that a comprehensive peace agreement could be reached soon.
The president expressed uncertainty this week about whether Putin and Zelensky will meet but has continued to insist that the Russian leader wants to end the war.
“I think we’re going to get the war done,” he told reporters on Tuesday in the Oval Office. “You never know what’s going to happen in a war. Strange things happen in war. The fact that [Putin] went to Alaska, our country, I think, was a big statement that he wants to get it done.”
Witkoff met with Andriy Yermak, the top adviser to Zelensky, in New York on Friday to discuss efforts to build momentum behind a peace deal. Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. are hashing out the details of postwar security guarantees, which Kyiv views as a precondition for any negotiations over territorial concessions.
Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv on Friday that he expected “several meetings at different venues” with European leaders next week.