The right-wing commentator played footage of the exchange Wednesday on his Fox News podcast, “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” He appeared rather incensed at Witkoff for heaping praise on Putin.

Witkoff was in St. Petersburg for a face-to-face meeting Wednesday when he thanked Putin for releasing Hubbard and said, “You talk so much about my president, President [Donald] Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that.”

“Steve Witkoff’s a nice guy, but [Russia] captured 75-year-old Hubbard,” said Kilmeade. “They tortured him in prison. He did nothing wrong. He’s an American teaching in Ukraine, just like he was teaching in Japan. They pretended he was an operative, when he’s a teacher.”

He noted, “He was living in Ukraine, they scoop him up, they jail him, torture him. They let him out, and now Steve Witkoff says, ‘Thank you, you are a great humanitarian?’ The Russians must be laughing their heads off going, ‘Are you kidding?’ I cannot believe this is happening.”

Kilmeade went on to briefly consider that the compliment might be part of a strategic “means to an end” in having Russia cease hostilities in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but doubled down on criticizing Witkoff and the comment itself: “That just makes you look naive.”

“A ‘humanitarian,’” Kilmeade exclaimed. “This guy kills his opponents, he arrests journalists, tries to poison people wherever they are around the world. He’s bombing innocent people on a daily basis when the Ukraine can honestly say they don’t aim for a single civilian.”

Kilmeade wasn’t the only conservative critic outraged by the remark, as many Republican lawmakers joined Democrats on Wednesday in condemning Witkoff — who has yet to successfully negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

The backlash arrives mere weeks after Trump waived fresh sanctions on Putin and resumed buying Russian diesel fuel, and after the White House allegedly slowed down critical U.S.-provided Starlink internet services in Ukraine — which led to the deaths of innocent civilians.

Putin was accused in 2023 by the International Criminal Court of war crimes for allegedly deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Last week, the United Nations reported that Putin’s attacks on Ukraine resulted in at least 328 civilian deaths there in September alone.