Washington DC [US], March 23 : US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that "the elephant in the room" for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine is the status of Crimea and four mainland Ukrainian regions 'occupied' by Russia, CNN reported.
He made the remarks during the interview with podcast host Tucker Carlson.
Witkoff also reflected on the 'warming up' of ties between the US and Russia, saying President Putin had commissioned a portrait of Donald Trump and sent it to him. He noted that the administration was making progress "that no one thought was possible" with Russia but that issues of territory still needed ironing out.
The four mainland regions were 'illegally annexed' during the conflict. Kremlin has since staged referenda on joining Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Kyiv and the international community decried as a propaganda exercise, but which Witkoff claimed was evidence of their desire to split from Ukraine, as reported by CNN.
"They're Russian-speaking," Witkoff said of the four eastern regions. "There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule."
Witkoff, who is Trump's Middle East envoy and is also playing a key role in the peace talks with Russia, said the "constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede... with regard to territory" had become "the elephant in the room" during negotiations.
Notably, talks are set to resume Monday in Saudi Arabia, with US officials set to meet officials from both Russia and Ukraine.
"The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?" Witkoff asked. "Can (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict."
Zelenskyy stressed last weekend that Ukraine's position "is that we do not recognize the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian", CNN reported.
The Ukrainian President also said that the US raised the issue during talks with Ukrainian delegates in the Saudi city of Jeddah, adding that he hopes the question can be resolved during later peace talks rather than discussions over an initial ceasefire. "It is dragging out the process for a long, long time," he said.
He noted that the meeting "got personal," after President Putin "had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist," which Witkoff took home to US President Donald Trump.
Witkoff also highlighted that following the assassination attempt against Trump in September, Putin said that he "went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed" for Trump, "not because he... could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him."
The special envoy said that Trump was "clearly touched" by Putin's story and portrait.
Witkoff implied that resolving the war in Ukraine could lead to cooperation on a broader range of issues and that the two sides were thinking about "integrating their energy policies in the Arctic," sharing sea lanes, collaborating on artificial intelligence and sending liquefied natural gas "into Europe together."
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