US envoy Steve Witkoff says the status of the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia is central to ending the war between Moscow and Kyiv.
In a wide-ranging interviewwith U.S. conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, Witkoff said negotiations over the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson and Crimea regions of Ukraine would determine how the conflict is settled.
"That's the elephant in the room," he said. "When that gets settled, we're having a very, very positive conversation."
Witkoff said that in these predominantly Russian-speaking regions, "there have been referendums [organized by Moscow] where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule."
But he said, "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 widely criticized referendums to legitimize the move, which were organized following Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“There are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory,” he added. “Can [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this?”
In September 2022, Moscow held referendums in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson without international observers amid reports of widespread fraud and coercion.
A large number of the residents of these regions had fled the Russian occupation and did not participate in voting.
Moscow later unilaterally declared Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson to be part of Russia.
The United Nations continues to recognize all four regions -- along with Crimea, which was occupied and annexed in 2014 -- as Ukrainian territory.
Witkoff, the U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East 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.