Russian-Occupied Ukrainian Regions Key To Ending War, Says US Envoy Steve Witkoff

US envoy Steve Witkoff said the resolving the status of the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia is key to ending the war in Ukraine as he appeared to move away from Washington's long-standing position rejecting Moscow's annexation of the regions.

In a wide-ranging interview with U.S. conservative media personality Tucker Carlson, Witkoff said negotiations over the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, and Crimea regions of Ukraine would likely determine how the conflict is settled.

Russia has said part of the reason it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was to "protect" Russian speakers in the eastern regions.

Many experts disagree with that assessment, saying Russian imperial ambitions underpin the conflict.

"That's the elephant in the room," he said. "When that gets settled, we're having a very, very positive conversation."

Seven months after the start of the invasion, the Kremlin declared the four eastern Ukrainian regions annexed and a part of Russia after a referendum vote that the Kremlin professed was an expression of voters' true will.

The vote came even though the regions are only partially occupied by Russian forces, governed by Russian-installed proxy administrators, and the fact that several million potential voters from the region were displaced and unable to cast ballots.

Shortly after the vote, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned Russia's proclaimed annexation of the regions, while then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated Washington's position that the United States would never recognize the "sham" referendums.

Trump and his team have repeatedly said that Ukraine will have to make concessions on land to secure a peace deal to end the more than three-year-old war. Russia currently controls about 20 percent of Ukraine, including large chunks of the four regions.

Witkoff appeared to move away from the position of the Biden administration and the international community at large, telling Carlson that "there have been referendums [organized by Moscow] where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule."

"The question is, will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?"

Kyiv has consistently rejected Russian claims to have annexed the Ukrainian territories as well as the referendums.

“There are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory,” Witkoff added.

“Can [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy survive politically if he acknowledges this?”

Many in Ukraine reacted angrily to the suggestion that the Moscow-run votes in occupied territories could be considered legitimate.

Kostyantyn Reutskiy, journalist, human rights activist, and former executive director of the East SOS Ukrainian charitable organization, said, "We, the residents of the Ukrainian east and Crimea, saw with our own eyes how this [the Moscow-controlled vote] happened.”

“It had nothing to do with the expression of the people's will," he added. "A tiny part of the local population took part in these so-called referendums, and in fact it was a performance to legalize Russia's decisions on annexation, occupation, and gaining control over part of the territory of a sovereign state.”

Kostyantyn Batozskiy, who now heads the Azov Development Agency and in 2014 observed the beginning of Russian aggression in Donetsk, said, "I saw with my own eyes how staged, implausible, and orchestrated [the vote was] on the part of Russia."

"In Donetsk -- which has a population of millions – there were not enough so-called ‘polling stations’ and those that were there -- anyone could come, take as many ballots as they wanted, and go from one polling station to another,” Batozskiy added.

Dainiel Fried, a longtime US diplomat and former ambassador to Poland, wrote on X that Witkoff's "credulous acceptance of Putin’s good will & Kremlin claims about Ukraine damage the US position going into the next talks with Russia. Blindness = weakness. "

"Mike Waltz & Marco Rubio won’t say anything publicly, but probably get this," he added, referring to the US national-security adviser and secretary of state.

In recent months, Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine may be unable to regain all its Russian-occupied territories by force, but he has stressed that Kyiv will not recognize any part of Ukraine as Russian.'

Witkoff, who has been actively involved in diplomatic efforts concerning the conflict in Ukraine, said that he remains hopeful after the recent round of high-level contacts, including US President Donald Trump's telephone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy.

“I am very, very optimistic that we're going to be able to bring the two sides together,” he said.

Witkoff has been actively involved in diplomatic efforts concerning the conflict in Ukraine, traveling to Russia last week to meet with Putin.

The two spoke for a few hours. Witkoff said his message to Putin was that he and Trump “were going to be two great leaders figuring out this conflict.”

Separately, Witkoff said it was important to end Putin’s political isolation to halt the conflict. Western leaders had cut off contact with the Russian president shortly after the start of the war in February 2022.

“How would we settle a conflict with someone who is the head of a major nuclear power unless we establish trust and good feelings with one another,” Witkoff said.

He said that, at their meeting, Putin handed him a portrait of Trump he had made by a top artist. He also said Putin told him he went to pray for Trump after he was almost killed by an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024 while campaigning for the presidency.