Key Points and Summary – A top U.S. envoy, Steve Witkoff, has expressed hope that a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine could be reached by the end of this year.
This optimism follows President Donald Trump’s recent separate meetings with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine.
However, significant hurdles remain, as the Kremlin is already publicly pushing back against the core concept of European security guarantees for Kyiv.
Despite being “very angry” over continued Russian strikes, President Trump also stated he believes a deal is possible, but Moscow’s resistance on key issues is creating major complications.
The Ukraine War Just Won’t End…
Donald Trump returned to office promising, several times, to deliver a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine on day one.
Now, he may have to settle for doing so in year one.
US special envoy for peace missions Steve Witkoff said in a Fox News interview this week that he is hopeful that the war will be over by the end of this year.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this year, and maybe quite a bit sooner, we actually can find the ingredients to get to that peace deal,” Witkoff told Fox News’ Bret Baier, as reported by the Kyiv Post.
What’s the next step, following President Trump’s individual meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this month, neither of which led to a ceasefire?
“I’m meeting with the Ukrainians this week. So I will be meeting with them this week in New York, and that’s a big signal. We talk to the Russians every day. I think we may end up seeing a bilateral meeting,” Witkoff said.
Per Reuters, oil prices are rising, in part due to the continued fighting, “as traders anticipated more U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure that could disrupt supplies.”
“There seems to be a sense the peace talks are dragging on,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst with the Price Futures Group, told Reuters. “There could be sanctions on Russia if these talks don’t go well.”
No Guarantees?
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is now reporting that Russia is opposed to European security guarantees for Ukraine, after reports that the U.S. had left the Alaska summit with the idea that Russia was open to such guarantees.
“Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said while Moscow welcomed recent efforts by United States President Donald Trump to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, he reiterated that Russia would not accept a European troop deployment there as part of security guarantees for Kyiv, as that would equate to a NATO presence in its neighbour’s territory – something it had long opposed,” the report said.
“Very Angry”
Meanwhile, ABC News reported Tuesday that Trump is “very angry” with Putin, as Russia has continued its strikes despite the peace push.
“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation,” Trump said of Putin on Monday. “And then unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and then I get very angry about it.”
However, much like his envoy, Trump expressed optimism that the war could be coming to an end soon.
“I think we’re going to get the war done,” Trump told the press. “You never know what’s going to happen in a war. Strange things happen in war. The fact that [Putin] went to Alaska, our country, I think, was a big statement that he wants to get it done.”
Gaza, Too?
Also, this week, Witkoff, in that same Fox News interview, indicated that he hopes the other years-long war that Trump has been trying to bring to an end, Israel’s war in Gaza, will also end by the end of the year.
“We think that we’re going to settle this one way or another, certainly before the end of this year,” the envoy, whose main portfolio is the Middle East, per Politico.
Witkoff also blamed Hamas for holding up the potential deal.
“There’s been a deal on the table for the last six or seven weeks that would have released 10 of the hostages out of the 20 who we think are alive,” the envoy said. “And it was Hamas who slow-played that process and it is Hamas now who are saying we accept that deal, and I think in large part they’re … changing their mind because the Israelis are putting some very intense pressure on them.”
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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Swamplaw Yankee
August 28, 2025 at 2:28 am
Hey, listening to Lavrov is less of a hardship that the Fellini 8 + 1/2 movie circus clowns that MAGA POTUS Trumpkins has out in the 3 rings.
The MAGA rank and file must have real strong guts to swallow all this bad moonshine these MAGA elite slimy clowns are brewing up foreign policy wise..
Like honking the Whackoff clown nose to make a “cease fire sound” or blowing a toy horn to make a “peace” honk just shows the MAGA clown show has no grasp of historic continuity, aka as the long game.
The ancient 1000 year old genocide of Ukrainians by genetically driven Russkie peasants seems beyond the vascular dementia of the Weirdo Whackoff slimy showoff travelling circus.
The USA was dragged by the nose thru the mud of Yugoslavia by the 1986 Moscow Commie Bolsheviks, The facts of repeating the same old script of a Minority Language scam are so obvious.
No one in the MSM + MAGA elite seems to comprehend that Lord Carrington had 39 con “Cease fires” in that ethnic miasma the USA never understood. Slobodan Milosovic used each cease fire to re-supply his army, re-arrange his armour, artillary, planes. etc., to better kill the other side. The UN, there in big numbers, uselessly counting how many rounds were fired as the genocide continued.
Yeah, boring. We can re-read the old script that Puti the Paedo is using right now on the Ukrainians. Puti dreams of the 11 years of 2014 POTUS greenlit sex trade mass abductions of Ukrainian children. How did Putin get so lucky to re-live vicariously the 1624 legal mass sex trade abductions of Ukrainian children for the russkies Personal satiation.
Trump dreams of being a crisis solver of emergencies that the US has created. “Call me in” and the MAGA Trump will solve it all. Notice how Trump just can not mention the biggest Genocide of them all. The 1932-33 Starvation ( HOLODOMOR) of 20,000,000 women and children by Putin’s Father. The reparation and compensation of Ukrainians victims just can not be words that self-come out of Trumps mouth.
The Serbians started Genocide only after they knew that the USA would not intervene with military force. Once the POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal made that non-intervention very clear in 2014 to tsarling Putin, Putin unleashed his inner genetic need to “Lolita” Ukrainian Children.
And, starting in 2014, every and any Muscovite deviant was air shipped, free, at no cost, Obama greenlight approved “Lolita” packages.
Why would any muscovite object? The blather of MAGA to stop the long, long, long sex trade in Ukrainian children rings no bells with Putin lovers and adorers. Only the Weirdo Wackoff slimers and Americans want what they like: short, immediate cease fire so Xi can resupply another 100,000 men and millions of drones inside Ukraine.
Then, like in Serbia, the ethnic genocide of Ukrainians can restart, and re-start, and re-start, and re-start.
Trump will be bored and start giving up to Lavrov’s agit-prop. The USA MAGA POTUS will start to lie like Lavrov. The Yankee approval of the theft of Crimea that the Obama POTUS began will be mouthed by POTUS Trumpkins. Trumpkins will become desperate with some other emergency that only he can solve and wish to dispose of the problem of having to actually think ( remember vascular dimensia) about the complex issues of a 500 year old on-going genocide. -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
August 28, 2025 at 3:06 am
There is an evil in this op-ed. What is it? hmmm.
The op-ed mixes in another conflict: of two ethnic entities that are religious in nature. Why is that done? Just an accident? The inner need to confuse the reader with agit-prop and not do both religious conflicts some decent coverage? Hmm. Maybe some one has a blatant conflict of interest?
The fact that the muslims have a Koran that targets the Ashkenazi that is a faithful adherent to the jewish faith is a fact. The reader does not deserve the disservice, I speculate that it is a disservice, of glibly mixing two distinct + complex ethnic genocides.
Particularly if the basic connection is the Wierdo Whackoff slimy clown 3 ring circus show. Maybe Fellini needed to integrate two separate circus companies as contiguous and the characters wandered from one 3 ring ensemble over to the second 3 ring ensemble. That only if Fellini had the budget to film such a competition between clowns, jugglers, etc.
Actually, the world is in such a state of emergency, POTUS Trumpkins needs to unilaterally install himself as the permanent adjudicator of all world real estate conflicts and greenlight himself as POTUS for life with 3 or 4 Weurdo Whackoff travelling circuses. Each Whackoff mindless circus would have its own aircraft carrier, to carry the stock of clown shoes and variety of animals needed to show the potent power of MAGA Trumpkins.
Just think + envisage 2 or 3 aircraft carriers full of wierdo Whackoffs clown shows officially visiting Israel in the very same time period. A double or even triple 8 + 1/2 movie spectacular in Trumpkin Colours. -30-
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