In an interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that aired late Friday, Witkoff stated that “there will be elections in Ukraine,” adding the war-torn country’s leadership had “agreed to it.”
The Trump administration has been ramping up pressure to force Ukraine’s hand into organizing a wartime election, which the country is constitutionally barred from doing.
The American president has described his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a “dictator without elections” — an assertion aligned with Russian-backed narratives that have sought to undermine the legitimacy of Ukraine’s leadership.
Critics say wartime elections would expose Ukraine to Russia’s destabilization tactics and be a logistical nightmare to organize in a country defending itself from an all-out invasion.
In the same interview, Witkoff also addressed Ukraine’s potential entry into the NATO military alliance, which Russia fiercely opposes.
“If there’s going to be a peace deal, Ukraine cannot be a member of NATO. I think that’s largely accepted,” Witkoff said.
But the U.S. envoy suggested that Ukraine could still benefit from similar security guarantees offered to NATO states under the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense clause, by which its members are compelled to provide assistance to each another if one of them is attacked.
“I think that’s open for discussion,” Witkoff said without providing more details.
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