Photo: Getty Images North America
Thanksgiving weekend was anything but quiet at the White House. Lost amid the possibility of boots on the ground in Venezuela, the response to the shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington and the firing of eight immigration judges in New York is the news that President Trump’s negotiators have put another peace deal on the table that could end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Even this has not gone smoothly, as possible terms of the settlement were leaked as a seeming wish list of Russian demands to walk away with nearly everything it wants in the region. WOR White House correspondent Jon Decker skipped the Thanksgiving leftovers to cover the developments concerning the war; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning to discuss the obstacles Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner must now navigate as they head to Moscow to talk to Putin.
Decker explained to host Larry Mendte that the sticking point of the war’s conclusion is a list of 28 points, which has since been whittled down to 19, that must be addressed: “We don’t know all nineteen points. I think that what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said is that there are issues that remain unresolved concerning what is called ‘territorial issues,’ and that’s probably the biggest issue concerning the war in Ukraine- if and when there’s an end to the war, what does the sovereign territory of Ukraine look like, what does Ukraine keep, what does Russia acquire? All of those are things that, I think, you don’t just have a meeting of the minds concerning those particular issues.”
But Decker suggests cautious optimism because, as he points out, we were once even closer than this to ending the hostilities, and it didn’t happen: “Let’s not forget, President Trump, at one point, actually met with President Putin -- that was in mid-August in Anchorage, Alaska. I don’t know about you [but] I thought that was the closest point that we could possibly be towards getting an end to the war in Ukraine… and, of course, that didn’t materialize.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images