Steve Witkoff says Putin is "a humanitarian"

Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy for everything, is a billionaire business friend but he has certainly learned the art of diplomacy as he goes about the world trying to stop wars on behalf of the White Office. Today he has met with Putin in St Petersburg and to his face told the Russian leader he thought he was "a humanitarian". This will have come as a surprise to the Ukrainian people who have died in their hundreds of thousands following the invasion by Russian troops of their sovereign country more than four and a half years ago. To be fair to Witkoff, the remark was in a different context. Putin had agreed, after an appeal from Trump, to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American citizen who was jailed after supposedly being detained while fighting the Russians in Ukraine. Witkoff used the word humanitarian to thank Putin for releasing the prisoner who is now on his way home. Nevertheless, most people would hesitate to use such a word when addressing the man who ordered the invasion in February 2022 and is continuing to authorise his military to target Ukrainian cities every night with drones and ballistic missiles. The only hope is that the release of Stephen Hubbard might just possibly be a precursor to a general move to end the war finally. Praising Putin for his humanity, in that wider context, might end up being a clever move to keep Putin sweet and encourage him to look more favourably on a peace settlement.