As shown in a clip posted to YouTube, Hannity asked Witkoff whether Putin was stringing Trump along while hoping to pound Ukraine into a final submission.
“A lot of people are skeptical, Steve,” Hannity said, adding, “Is there, with Putin, a deal emerging, or is he trying to buy time, knowing that Putin sees a window of opportunity without hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars in weaponry, you know, giving him a military advantage? Do you really see a deal emerging? Are you confident?”
“I think you used a very good word there, Sean, emerging. I do. This is the third meeting I’ve had with him,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff said that his recent five-hour meeting with Putin and two of his advisers “was a compelling meeting, and towards the end we actually came up with a final — I’m going to say finally, but I don’t mean it in the way that we were waiting. I mean it in the way that it took a while for us to get to this place — what Putin’s request is to get to have a permanent peace here.”
“So beyond the ceasefire, we got an answer to that,” he said.
Witkoff said the deal that could emerge might be about more than Ukrainian land held by Russian armies.
“This peace deal is about these so-called five territories, but there’s so much more to it. There’s security protocols,” he said.
“There’s, you know, no NATO, NATO Article 5. I mean, it’s just, you know, a lot of detail attached to it. It’s a complicated situation from, you know, rooted in, you know, some real problematic things happening between the two countries,” he said.
“And I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large. On top of that, I believe there’s a possibility to reshape the Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region, too. Partnerships create stability,” he said.
“We want you to come, and I think to come and to see. You think you understand what’s going on here. OK, we respect your position. You understand. But, please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelenskyy said.
“Come, look, and then let’s — let’s move with a plan how to finish the war. You will understand with whom you have a deal. You will understand what Putin did. And we will not prepare anything. It will not be theater, with preparing actors in the streets and the [city] center. We don’t do this. We don’t need it. You can go exactly where you want, in any city which been under attacks. What I said to them, just to come and to understand.”
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