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White House envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Vladimir Putin in glowing terms as trustworthy and said the Russian leader told him he had prayed for his “friend” US President Donald Trump when he was shot.

Witkoff met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks — which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine — were constructive and “solution-based.”

In an interview with right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson, the envoy said he has come to regard Putin as not a “bad guy,” and that the Russian president was a “great” leader seeking to end Moscow’s deadly three-year conflict with Kyiv.

“I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me,” Witkoff said in the interview aired Friday.

“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war, and all the ingredients that led up to it.”

He also described a “personal” element of the discussion in which Putin recalled his reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024 as the Republican held a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Putin “told me a story… about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff said.

“Not because… he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend.”

Putin had commissioned a “beautiful portrait of President Trump from a leading Russian artist,” and asked the envoy to take it home to Trump, Witkoff added.



https://punchng.com/putin-not-a-bad-guy-trump-envoy-says/