Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said President Donald Trump is uniquely positioned to drive negotiations between Ukraine and Russia toward an eventual peace agreement, telling Newsmax on Tuesday that recent prisoner exchanges and backchannel contacts show momentum is building, even as major differences remain.

“President Trump holds all the cards,” Whitaker told “Newsline” host Bianca de la Garza. “He’s put tariffs, secondary sanctions, on India. And he could do that with other countries that are buying Russian oil. He had meetings on Friday and Monday of last week to try to create the conditions so that these two sides could talk.”

Whitaker’s comments come a day after Trump softened on the chances of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “They don’t like each other, really,” Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office.

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