When US President Donald Trump wanted someone to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to open negotiations for a potential deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war, he didn’t dispatch his secretary of state.The man he sent to the Kremlin to handle a titanic geopolitical challenge does not even have a diplomatic background.Instead Trump picked his personal friend, golf buddy and billionaire real estate developer Steve Witkoff.The president has made Witkoff his Middle East envoy. But last week the Bronx-born businessman found himself in discussions about ending a conflict in Eastern Europe – having been “with [Putin] for a very extended period, like about three hours”, in Trump’s words.Witkoff was in Moscow to help facilitate a deal that saw the US and Russia swap prisoners, which was seen as signalling a possible thaw in relations between the two countries. Witkoff also played a part in brokering the current ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, for which both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden took credit. Though he was not yet officially in his post, Witkoff flew to Tel Aviv to meet Netanyahu before the deal was brokered in Qatar. He then spent time with Biden’s envoy Brett McGurk in Doha, who later praised their cooperation, calling it a “very close partnership, even friendship”, according to the Washington Post.Witkoff is now returning to the region, specifically Saudi Arabia, for the first US-Russian face-to-face talks over the war in Ukraine after Trump had his own call with Putin. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz are also attending.But the bold moves made by Trump’s team are stirring concern among Western allies, who fear a new world order in which key players are shut out of discussions. Ukraine and other European nations were not invited to the Saudi meeting.So, who is Witkoff – dubbed by US media as “the man in the room”, taking centr …
