U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff revealed a more tender side to the American-Russian relationship during an interview with Tucker Carlson.
“[Vladimir Putin] told me a story … about how when [President Donald Trump] was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the President,” Witkoff told the former Fox Anchor on March 22, of his second meeting with the Russian leader. Putin did it “not because … he could become the President of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him, and he was praying for his friend.”
During the same visit to Moscow, Putin apparently also presented Witkoff with a gift for Trump: a painting of the 45th and 47th President that he commissioned from a Russian artist.
“I came home and delivered that message to our President and delivered the painting, and he was clearly touched by it,” Witkoff said. “So this is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to re-establish through, by the way, a simple word called communication.”
This is not the first time Putin has reportedly been sympathetic with American leaders after a tragedy.
Putin is widely reported to be the first world leader to have called President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and he also reportedly warned President Bill Clinton about Osama Bin Laden.
Putin is a lifelong member of the Russian Orthodox Church and was baptized in secret because of his father’s communist party affiliations.
Under Putin’s leadership, the Russian government has attempted to turn the image of a godless communist Russia against a pious United States on its head. Russian military advertisements embraced a line of messaging in the late summer of 2024 that framed itself as a haven for the faithful and a refuge from Western neo-liberalism as a war waged in Ukraine, The Dallas Express reported.
However, American-Russian relations have not been all warm.
Former President Barack Obama reportedly wrote of Putin in his 2020 memoir, “Putin did, in fact, remind me of the sorts of men who had once run the Chicago machine or Tammany Hall [a New York City political organization] – tough, street-smart, unsentimental characters who knew what they knew, who never moved outside their narrow experiences, and who viewed patronage, bribery, shakedowns, fraud, and occasional violence as legitimate tools of the trade.”
Obama’s Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton was also not a fan of Putin. She reportedly said in 2008, “He was a KGB agent — by definition he doesn’t have a soul.”
American relations with the Russians have been highly variable, even within presidential administrations. Bush had prompted the soul talk by vouching for Putin’s character in 2001, saying that he’d looked into the Russian’s eyes and gotten “a sense of his soul.” Later, American-Russian relations in the Bush Administration relations would sour when Russia invaded Georgia.
Clinton briefly attempted a “reset” with the Russians in 2009. Still, by the end of her term as America’s top diplomat in 2013, she encouraged Obama to snub a meeting offer with Putin, per The Washington Post.
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump said, “I think I’d get along ‘very well’ with Vladimir Putin.” However, during his first stint in office, Trump signed a sanctions bill against Russia.