“You too are a humanitarian”: the embarrassing compliment from American envoy Steve Witkoff to Vladimir Putin

“You often talk about my president, Donald Trump, as a humanitarian. You are also a humanitarian, Sir, and I salute you.” In Saint Petersburg, Wednesday October 21, Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's emissary, thanked Vladimir Putin for the release of Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American teacher detained for more than four years in Russia. In a video broadcast by the state media Russia Today, the American addressed these remarks to the Russian president at the opening of their interview devoted to American proposals to end the war in Ukraine.

This familiarity was built over the visits of the American envoy to Moscow, although Witkoff had already displayed this esteem in March 2025. In an interview broadcast on March 21, he declared that he did not consider Putin to be a “bad guy”. He also said that the Russian president had entrusted him with a portrait of Donald Trump, made by a Russian artist, so that he could bring it back to Washington. According to the emissary, Putin also assured him that he had prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt against the American president in July 2024.

This Wednesday, it is therefore the release of Stephen Hubbard which earned the Russian president these new thanks. The latter lived in Izium, in eastern Ukraine, when Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022. Arrested the following April, he was sentenced in October 2024 to nearly seven years in a penal colony for mercenarism. Washington considers these accusations to be fabricated. Donald Trump was finally able to announce on Wednesday that this man, detained for more than four years, was on his way to reunite with his family. On Truth Social, he claims to have asked Putin for his release in a phone call the previous week. “There was no need to carry out an ‘exchange’,” he insisted, assuring that the United States had given nothing in return.