U.S. Vice President JD Vance backed President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who called Vladimir Putin a “humanist.”
After meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, Witkoff thanked the Russian president for releasing U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard, who was convicted in Russia of serving as a mercenary. Witkoff said: “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you, and I thank you again.”
American journalists later asked Vance whether he agreed with Witkoff’s remarks.
Q: Witkoff called Putin 'a humanitarian' for agreeing to release Stephen Hubbard. Do you agree with that?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2026
JD VANCE: I agree with Steve Witkoff saying something nice to a person who just released an American hostage. pic.twitter.com/BV7MnDxApp
I agree with Steve Witkoff saying something nice to a person who just released an American hostage. Whether you agree with the underlying sentiment or not, Steve Witkoff is a diplomat. His job is to go over there and get a job done. I care much less about what Steve said and about the fact that he is bringing an American hostage home to his family.
Vance said Americans “should all be celebrating” Hubbard’s return, “not be complaining about what [he] said in order to get it done.”
Witkoff and Putin met the day after Witkoff held talks with Volodymyr Zelensky and representatives of European countries in Oslo. Witkoff brought new Ukrainian and European proposals for ending the war to the meeting in Russia.
After the meeting, the Kremlin said it was ready to resume trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine between November 10 and 19 (after the U.S. midterm elections). However, Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov said the EU’s and Kyiv’s “new approaches” contained “not all that much that was useful for a settlement in Ukraine.”
Read more
- Who is Stephen Hubbard, the American Putin just freed?
- Putin and U.S. envoy Witkoff hold talks in St. Petersburg as Washington pushes a new plan to end the war in Ukraine
- U.S. pushes to revive Ukraine–Russia talks after Witkoff and Kushner meet Zelensky in Kyiv
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