Trump 'surrendering to the Russians' on Ukraine, top Democrat says

Source: The Guardian

Sun 23 Feb 2025 13.34 EST
Last modified on Sun 23 Feb 2025 13.42 EST


A senior Democratic lawmaker accused Donald Trump of “surrendering to the Russians” on Sunday, as Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine was “the only way to end the carnage”. In an interview on ABC News’ This Week, Democratic senator Jack Reed, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, hit out at Trump’s recent verbal attacks on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and increased alignment with Russia.

“Essentially, this is President Trump surrendering to the Russians,” Reed said. “This is not a statesman or a diplomat. This is just someone who admires Putin, does not believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.”

But senior administration officials sought to side-step accusations that Trump’s re-positioning of US policies on Ukraine, including a possible deal for Ukraine to repay US military and financial support with rare-earth materials, amounted to a capitulation to the Russian position on the war.

Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the mideast who revealed this week that he had “spent a lot of time with President Putin”, during a recent trip to Moscow, “talking, developing a friendship, a relationship with him”, declined to blame Russia for starting war in Ukraine, calling Ukraine’s ambitions to join Nato “a threat to the Russians”.

“The war didn’t need to happen – it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians,” Witkoff said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining Nato”, he said. “That didn’t need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians and so we have to deal with that fact.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/23/trump-russia-ukraine