Steve Witkoff

Overview

Steve Witkoff is an American billionaire real estate developer and the founder of the Witkoff Group who, without any prior diplomatic experience, became one of Donald Trump’s most consequential envoys — first as special envoy to the Middle East, then as the president’s lead negotiator with Russia over the war in Ukraine (AFP). On September 5–6, 2026, he and Jared Kushner completed a high-profile Moscow-to-Kyiv shuttle — more than three hours with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, then a first official visit to Kyiv for talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy — that produced “encouraging” discussions but no breakthrough (AP). His tenure has been defined by two recurring controversies: his strikingly warm public posture toward Putin, which critics call deference to an adversary, and his family’s deep financial ties to the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial (USA Today; ABC Audio).

From the Bronx to billions

Steven Charles Witkoff was born on March 15, 1957, in the New York borough of the Bronx (AFP). He graduated from Hofstra University and holds a law degree, beginning his career as a real estate attorney at the New York firm Dreyer & Traub (AFP; RBC-Ukraine). Donald Trump was one of his clients there, and the two became friends while working on a business deal (RBC-Ukraine).

After two years practicing law, Witkoff co-founded the residential and commercial real estate company Stellar Management with a colleague, and in the late 1990s established his own firm, the Witkoff Group (RBC-Ukraine). The Witkoff Group was founded in 1997 and, as of 2019, owned more than 50 real estate properties in the United States and abroad (AFP). His wife and a son work at the company (AFP). Forbes estimated his wealth at $2 billion, according to AFP’s December 2025 profile (AFP).

Witkoff has spoken publicly about personal loss: his son Andrew died of an OxyContin overdose in 2011 at the age of 22 (AFP). During the first Trump administration, he led the Great American Economic Revival Industry Group, an organization created to combat the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (RBC-Ukraine).

The Trump relationship

Witkoff’s defining asset in Washington is his personal bond with Trump. He is described by AFP as a billionaire “like his friend” and a regular golfing partner of the president’s, and he was the one called on to introduce Trump at a celebratory gathering at a Washington arena following the January 20, 2025 inauguration (AFP). He supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and served as co-chair of the inauguration committee (RBC-Ukraine). For Trump, AFP reported, the 68-year-old Witkoff brings “the quality the president most cherishes: personal loyalty” (AFP).

That loyalty, rather than any diplomatic résumé, explains his appointment: though “a complete neophyte in the world of diplomacy,” Witkoff was named special envoy to the Middle East roughly a week after Trump’s election victory, a reflection of the two men’s close relationship (AFP).

Middle East envoy: the Gaza ceasefire

Even before Trump took office, Witkoff joined the Gaza ceasefire talks, taking part in a final round of negotiations in early January 2025 alongside Brett McGurk, the Middle East adviser to then-president Joe Biden — a rare collaboration between an outgoing and incoming US administration (AFP). After attending talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, he flew to Israel on a Saturday — interrupting Benjamin Netanyahu on the Jewish Sabbath — in an urgent bid to finalize an agreement (AFP). The truce took effect on January 19, the eve of Trump’s inauguration (AFP). RBC-Ukraine, citing The New York Times, credited Witkoff’s direct, outspoken negotiating style with helping secure a deal under which 33 hostages held by Hamas were to be exchanged for approximately 1,000 Palestinian prisoners (RBC-Ukraine).

On January 29, Witkoff traveled to Gaza, much of which had been reduced to rubble after 15 months of an Israeli offensive launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack — making him the first US official to visit the territory since the war began (AFP). In February 2025 he publicly defended Trump’s stunning proposal to “take over” the Gaza Strip and move its two million Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere, telling Fox News that “a better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today” — even as the idea drew fire in the region, with some calling it tantamount to ethnic cleansing (AFP).

Witkoff’s unorthodox approach broke several traditions at once: he worked alongside the outgoing Biden administration on the first ceasefire, met directly with representatives of Hamas — which the United States designates as a terrorist group — to push them on a deal, and after Israel targeted Hamas leaders meeting in Qatar in September, personally offered condolences in Cairo to the top Hamas negotiator, Khalil al-Haya, whose son was killed in the Israeli strike (AFP). “I told him that I had lost a son, and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children,” Witkoff later told CBS News’ 60 Minutes (AFP).

The Russia channel: praise, territorial claims and criticism

On February 11, 2025, Witkoff made a special visit to Moscow and, according to RBC-Ukraine, personally transported American citizen Marc Fogel — who had spent three years in a Russian prison on drug possession charges — home on his private jet (RBC-Ukraine). Trump then secretly expanded Witkoff’s mandate beyond Middle Eastern affairs “to establish a negotiation channel with the Russians,” and after a February 12 phone call with Putin announced that Witkoff would join the US negotiating team focused on ending the war in Ukraine (RBC-Ukraine).

His public posture toward Putin then detonated a controversy. In an hour-plus interview with Tucker Carlson on March 21, 2025, Witkoff called Putin a “super smart guy” whom he takes “at his word” and said, “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy” (USA Today). He recounted that Putin had commissioned a portrait of Trump from a “leading Russian artist” that Witkoff delivered to the White House, and said Putin had “prayed” for Trump after the July 2024 assassination attempt — “not because he was the President of the United States,” but “because he was praying for his friend” (USA Today).

In the same interview, Witkoff implied Russia had a legitimate claim to the four Ukrainian territories it seized during the invasion — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — saying their residents had voted in favor of Russian annexation (USA Today). Those September 2022 elections, held months after Russia invaded, were widely denounced as a sham by the United States and its European allies (USA Today). “They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff said, asking whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “survive politically” if the world acknowledged the territories as Russian (Kyiv Independent). He also claimed Ukraine’s leadership had “largely conceded that they are not going to be a member of NATO,” asserted Russia “100%” does not want a wider war in Europe, and floated a future of US–Russia business collaboration on Arctic energy policy, natural gas sales to Europe and artificial intelligence (Kyiv Independent).

The backlash was swift. Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called the comments “insane” and accused Trump’s envoy of “negotiating for the other side,” saying it was “insane that you have a U.S. negotiator taking the side of our enemy” (USA Today). Separately, AFP reported that Bloomberg News had obtained a transcript of a telephone conversation in which Witkoff advised one of Putin’s advisers on the best way to present a Ukraine war-end plan to Trump — telling him Russia “has always wanted a peace deal” and that he had “the deepest respect for President Putin” (AFP).

The September 2026 shuttle

Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Moscow on September 5, 2026, holding more than three hours of closed-door talks with Putin — their eighth visit to Moscow during the war (AP; AFP). In televised comments, Putin said Russia would ensure the envoys’ safety in Kyiv and thanked Trump for persisting in his peace efforts despite them being “not simple,” adding that “no matter what happens next, contacts of this kind are undoubtedly always beneficial” (AFP). Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov called the Moscow talks “extremely frank,” while telling the Americans that Moscow was “confident” it could achieve its military goal of seizing the rest of eastern Ukraine (AFP).

The next day, September 6, the envoys arrived in Kyiv by train — the country’s airspace has been closed since February 2022 — for what AP described as their first official visit to Ukraine (AFP; AP). Zelenskyy held three rounds of talks with the Americans on Sunday, the last of which brought in national security advisers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany (AP). The two sides agreed to a follow-up meeting involving Ukraine, the US and Europe, though a location was not set (AP).

Both Moscow and Kyiv had vowed not to strike each other’s capitals for three days to allow the negotiations to take place — Putin ordered no strikes on Kyiv for three days, and Zelenskyy promised Ukraine would refrain from strikes on Moscow (AFP). Fighting continued elsewhere, and no breakthrough was announced: AP reported the talks were “encouraging” but that the core demands of Moscow and Kyiv “remain mutually exclusive,” especially over territorial concessions (AP). Witkoff said the US was pursuing “a diplomatic resolution to this conflict, not a kinetic resolution,” and that the Moscow meeting had produced “new ideas” that were brought to Kyiv (AP). AFP noted that US peace efforts had stalled in part because of Washington’s war with Iran (AFP).

Money and conflicts: World Liberty Financial

Alongside the diplomacy, Witkoff’s finances drew scrutiny. In September 2026, ABC News reported that financial disclosures obtained by a government watchdog showed Witkoff had earned nearly $107 million in 2025 from a holding company affiliated with World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm he cofounded with President Trump and members of their respective families (ABC Audio). He had at one point been listed as a “co-founder emeritus” on World Liberty’s website, a title he shared with Trump (ABC Audio).

The firm is operated by Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff, and Trump’s three sons, and it recently secured preliminary approval from the Trump administration to operate as a bank — which critics say presents the appearance of a conflict of interest for an envoy negotiating with foreign governments (ABC Audio). World Liberty had said in May 2025 that Witkoff was in the process of divesting and had “no operational role, no financial interest in WLFI deals, and no influence on day-to-day decisions” (ABC Audio). A White House spokesperson told ABC News that Witkoff has now “fully divested from World Liberty Financial, and his prior commercial activities are completely unrelated to his efforts to end global conflicts on the President’s behalf” (ABC Audio).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not give a precise current net worth: the only figure from a source read for it is Forbes’ $2 billion estimate via AFP’s December 2025 profile, which has not been re-verified for 2026. It does not state the exact dates Witkoff formally assumed his envoy offices, which the sources read did not confirm. It does not assert the February 2025 Marc Fogel flight beyond RBC-Ukraine’s single-sourced account, or the contents of the Bloomberg-reported phone transcript beyond AFP’s account of it. It does not claim any trilateral talks have been scheduled, any territory conceded, or any ceasefire framework agreed — the September 2026 shuttle produced encouragement and a follow-up commitment, not an outcome. It does not repeat Rep. Moulton’s “negotiating for the other side” characterization as fact; those are his words, attributed to him. And it does not assert a conflict of interest as an established fact — critics describe an appearance of one, while World Liberty and the White House deny it.