Trump's Russia envoy will bring back only humiliation

Arriving in Moscow ahead of Donald Trump's “ceasefire or suffer” deadline for the Kremlin, Steve Witkoff might have wondered what he's there for. To threaten? Reassure? Or repeat the cooing, craven performances he's shown Vladimir Putin in the past?

- SAM KILEY WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR

The US president has been taking a much tougher line, in public, when it comes to getting Russia to wind down its war against Ukraine, in a shift away from the blatantly pro-Putin stand of his earlier presidency. If Russia doesn't join ceasefire discussions by tomorrow, Trump has threatened to implement more sanctions against Moscow.

And after Dmitri Medvedev, the deputy director of Russia's security council and the Kremlin's in-house troll, threatened unspecified “further steps” following Russia's withdrawal from the defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the US president announced he was moving two nuclear strike submarines to threaten Moscow.

Both this and tomorrow's deadline are empty and performative. Russia's trade with the US is close to zero anyway, after earlier sanctions saw it plummet. More bilateral throttling won't make any difference. And the whole point of the US nuclear deterrent is that it has strike capability against Russia 24/7 from submarines that prowl the oceans, in secret, armed with long-range nuclear missiles - they don't need to be on Putin's doorstep to rattle his cage.

Witkoff, a former property tycoon, was appointed Trump's Middle East envoy and has since enjoyed a role as the president's international diplomatic Mr Fixit. But he's failed to bring peace to the Middle East, and failed to deliver on Trump's boast that he would end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours”.