The biggest obstacle to resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine is the status of Crimea and the four mainland Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia, said US special envoy Steve Witkoff, calling them “the elephant in the room” in peace talks.
In a long interview with podcast host Tucker Carlson, Witkoff – who also revealed Russia’s President Putin had commissioned a portrait of Donald Trump and sent it to him – said the administration was making progress “that no one thought was possible” with Russia, but that issues of territory still need ironing out.
The four mainland regions, which Witkoff appeared to struggle to name and needed prompting from Carlson, were illegally annexed during Russia’s full-scale invasion and Kyiv vehemently opposes giving them up.
The 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.
“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, Trump’s Middle East envoy who also plays a key role in 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. 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.”
Zelensky stressed last weekend that Ukraine’s position “is that we do not recognize the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian.”
The US raised the issue during talks with Ukrainian delegates in the Saudi city of Jeddah, Zelensky said, 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.
‘Gracious’ Putin
Witkoff said he was impressed by how “gracious” the Russian leader has been during the pair’s discussions, praising him as “smart” and “straightforward.”
Before meeting Putin in Moscow, Witkoff said someone in the Trump administration warned him to “watch it, because he’s an ex-KGB guy,” referring to Putin’s former career in the Soviet Union’s security agency.
Witkoff said he downplayed the person’s fears, saying Putin’s background in the agency was a measure of his intelligence. “In the old days, the only people who went into the KGB were the smartest people in the nation… He’s a super smart guy,” he recalled saying.
“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said, saying it was “gracious” of the Russian leader to receive him in Moscow for talks earlier this month.
That meeting “got personal,” he said, recalling how Putin “had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist,” which Witkoff took home to the president.
Witkoff said also 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.”
Trump was “clearly touched” by Putin’s story and the portrait, Witkoff said.
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.”
“Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the United States are doing, collaboratively, good things together?” he asked.