Key Points and Summary – Ahead of a Friday deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, President Donald Trump has dispatched a special envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to Moscow for last-minute talks.
-This diplomatic push follows recent escalations, including Trump moving up the deadline for Russia to avoid “secondary tariffs” and deploying U.S. nuclear submarines.
-Witkoff, a longtime Trump ally who has met with Vladimir Putin before, is tasked with getting a deal to “stop the killing.”
-While Kyiv has low expectations for a breakthrough, officials see Trump’s tougher stance as a potentially positive shift.
In 2 Words: Last Chance?
President Donald Trump’s threat to impose “secondary tariffs” on Russia, which would target the countries that buy its oil, if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine, doesn’t appear to have moved Russia much.
And it also doesn’t appear that much has changed since Trump moved the deadline up by more than a month, to early August.
Now, however, Trump is sending an envoy to Moscow to try to broker a last-minute deal.
According to The Guardian, Steve Witkoff will visit Moscow this week, ahead of the Friday deadline. Witkoff is expected to arrive in Moscow on Wednesday.
“Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed,” Trump told reporters of the goal for sending the envoy.
Witkoff has met with Putin before; on one occasion, the Russian president presented the envoy with an oil painting of Trump.
“In the second visit that I had, it got personal,” Witkoff said in an interview with Tucker Carlson this spring, as reported by the Hill. “The president, President Putin, had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump, which I brought home and delivered to him.”
A Kremlin spokesperson said this week that the Russian government is “always happy to see Mr Witkoff in Moscow.”
The Witkoff trip follows Trump’s move last week to move a pair of nuclear submarines towards the “region” of Russia, following hostile tweets from the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The View From Kyiv
Per the report, the feeling in Ukraine is that there’s “little expectation that Witkoff will make a breakthrough with Putin, but a hope that Trump’s changed rhetoric and tougher stance on Moscow may lead to a real change in US support for Ukraine.”
“After that he’ll look whether this is helping to bring about the end of the war or not, and if not, then he will move to the next step,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told The Guardian.
“Trump has already said he’s ready to sell Europe as much weapons as they want [to pass to Ukraine]. Before he didn’t say that … This is already a different conception of the world.”
About the Envoy
Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime Trump ally, is officially the Trump Administration’s envoy to the Middle East, having participated in ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas earlier this year.
Last week, amid reports of mass starvation, Witkoff visited the Gaza Strip, in a rare visit by a U.S. official.
“Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza — level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions, and meeting with [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and other agencies,” Witkoff wrote on X. The purpose of the visit was to give [the president] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
There was, however, some criticism inside Gaza of the envoy’s visit.
“It was a PR stunt, a controlled visit supervised and dictated by the Israeli military,” Ellie Burgos, an American critical care nurse volunteering in Gaza, told NBC News. “What they saw was not the reality.”
“Food is still incredibly difficult to find, people are still being shot at aid distribution sites, and violence continues.”
Witkoff also met with the families of Israeli hostages and told them that the president wants a wide-ranging agreement to free them, rather than any type of phased deal.
“President Trump now believes that everybody ought to come home at once – no piecemeal deals. That doesn’t work,” Wiktoff said, per Axios.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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PseudoExpertent
August 4, 2025 at 11:10 am
Witkoff will leave empty-handed.
He will have to eat grass or hay or just russkie horse manure.
The war will end with nuclear weapons. This is FB very certain.
Why.
Western intelligence services are now SECRETLY working with ukro nazi sabotage specialists on a nefarious plan to attack Russian oil tankers.
Once the unspeakably really unspeakable results erupt, there can only be one response.
An all-out nuke strike.
pagar
August 5, 2025 at 12:30 am
A lot of people are getting killed. Where ?
In gaza. Killed every day.
This august 8 2035, if the guns don’t fall silent (in donbass), B-2 bombers could be flying all the way from missouri to donbass.
Meanwhile on august 7 2025, trump will start to impose 25% import tariffs on india for buying russian oil.
We’re now living in a real-life james hadley chase world.
Zhduny
August 5, 2025 at 7:52 am
Russia MUST inform steve witkoff that it is fully ready to hit Taipei with a RS-12M2 rocket.
So, What can trump do after that. Cry at xi’s shoulders.
Or finally recognize that russia isn’t iran or israel.
Today, trump is seen going off the rails due to his past entanglement with jeff, causing him now to have many headaches and worries, and so he could be losing his job. Very soon.