After President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday — leaving the summit meeting without a ceasefire agreement from Putin — Trump’s U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff (who attended the meetings), appeared on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream.
Bream showed a clip of Trump warning on Wednesday that “there will be very severe consequences” if Putin didn’t agree to stop the war or a ceasefire.
Bream also reported that Trump told her Fox News colleague Brett Baier on Air Force One en route to the meeting that he would be “very unhappy” if he came away from the Alaskan summit without a ceasefire.
Having relayed those two statements from the President, Bream asked Witkoff: “So, how do you call this a win if he didn’t get that?”
OH MY GOD: Fox News just played Trump’s empty threats if he doesn’t get a ceasefire on Friday—then asked Steve Witkoff POINT BLANK: How do you call this a win if you didn’t get that?” His answer was even worse, admitting how Putin played Trump from the get-go.
“Putin led… pic.twitter.com/TlFTRqEcea
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) August 17, 2025
Witkoff responded: “Shannon, as you know, a ceasefire is a condition precedent, generally speaking, before a peace deal. So in that context the President has always talked about a ceasefire, until he made a lot of different wins in this meeting and began to realize that we could be talking about a peace deal.”
Witkoff added: “The ultimate deal here is a peace deal, and we were talking about much more robust security guarantees than anyone has ever imagined before. We were talking about EU admission, there were all kinds of subject matter discussed here, that began to lead the President to the assumption that we could finish this thing with a peace deal and really end the killing, almost immediately. And that’s what we went for. That’s what real dealmakers do, and that’s what he did, and it really was an amazing feat for me to watch happen.”
On CNN’s State of the Union, Witkoff contended that the Russians could allow the U.S. and its European allies to offer Ukraine a NATO-style security guarantee as part of an eventual deal to end the war.
TAPPER: “Is that what’s on the table, that Ukraine has to agree to cede all of Donbas?”
WITKOFF: “I don’t know that we have the time now to go through all the different issues on these five regions… The Russians made some concessions at the table with regard to all five of… pic.twitter.com/KISlTQXBrv
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 17, 2025
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also Trump’s national security adviser, attended the meetings and confirmed that a potential security guarantee was discussed.
Rubio sounded more cautious than Witkoff when he spoke on NBC’s Face the Nation, saying of the potential security guarantee: “How that’s constructed, what we call it, how it’s built, what guarantees are built into it that are enforceable, that’s what we’ll be talking about over the next few days with our partners.”
Rubio added, “We’re still a long ways off. We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We’re not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made towards one.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says “both sides are going to have to make concessions” to reach a peace deal and end the war in Ukraine, telling @margbrennan:
“If there aren’t concessions, if one side gets everything they want, that’s called surrender. That’s called the end of… pic.twitter.com/9yb8FmDfVc
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 17, 2025
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of many of Ukraine’s European allies will be in Washington, D.C. on Monday to discuss the potential security guarantee and Putin’s demand to keep the Donbas (a region in Ukraine), which Zelensky has rejected.
Ceding the Donbas and other areas of Ukraine to Russia as part of a peace deal is non-negotiable, Zelensky has said repeatedly. “The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible,” Zelensky asserts, “impossible to give up territory or trade land.”