OAN Staff Blake Wolf
4:39 PM – Monday, March 10, 2025
United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, revealed on Monday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky apologized to President Donald Trump in a letter following their public shouting match in the Oval Office.
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“Zelensky sent a letter to the president. He apologized for that whole incident that happened in the Oval Office,” Witkoff stated during a Monday Fox News segment.
“I think that it was an important step and there’s been a lot of discussion between our teams and the Ukrainians and the Europeans who are relevant to this discussion as well,” he continued. “These are not complicated things, they just … need to be put on the table and everybody needs to be transparent about what their expectations are, then we can begin to have a discussion about how we compromise.”
Witkoff added that Zelensky apologizing for his behavior during the meeting was “progress.”
During his address to Congress last week, President Trump revealed that he received a letter from Zelensky, although he did not report that the Ukrainian leader apologized.
“Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,” Trump stated during his speech, reading from the Zelensky’s letter.
“We really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence,” Trump added, continuing to read the letter aloud.
The meeting with Trump and Zelensky at the end of last month in the Oval Office was reportedly supposed to end with Zelensky signing a minerals deal, tying the U.S. and Ukrainian economies closer together.
Instead, the meeting devolved into the two world leaders shouting over each other, with President Trump arguing that Zelensky is “gambling with World War III.”
The apology from Zelensky follows after President Trump froze intelligence sharing and military assistance to Ukraine, pressuring Kyiv towards the negotiating table.
“I hope we get things back on track with the Ukrainians and everything resumes,” Witkoff stated. “I think those are all decisions of the president, but I think he felt that Zelensky’s letter was a very positive first step.”
Additionally, Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s meeting with Ukrainian officials, in an attempt to iron out a peace agreement with Russia.
“We really want to sort of ascertain where they stand on this and what they’re willing to do in order to achieve peace,” Rubio stated on Monday. “I think if we emerge there with a good meeting that we feel good about and can report back to the president, then I think decisions will be made in regards to the pause.”
Rubio revealed that the point of the conversation is not to “draw lines on a map,” but rather, to gain a “general sense of what concessions are in the realm of the possible for them and what they would need in return and then find out what the Russian position is in that regard. And that’ll give us a pretty good assessment of how far apart we truly are.”
Rubia added that Ukraine has “suffered greatly, and their people have suffered greatly, and it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end, to prevent more suffering.”
Zelensky is reportedly in Saudi Arabia, although he is not expected to attend the meeting on Tuesday.
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