Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, is calling it “the elephant in the room” of the current peace talks. It’s the stumbling block of whether Washington and its troublesome proxy in Kiev will recognise the new status of Crimea and the four Russian territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
In a long form interview wit host Tucker Carlson, Witkoff has indicated that the Trump administration is making progress “that no one thought was possible” with Russia, despite the fact that there are no changes to the situation on ground, as the fighting continues and Ukraine, clearly with the help of the US, UK and NATO, continues to hit sensitive targets inside mainland Russia.
Talks are set to resume this Monday in Riyhad, Saudi Arabia, with US officials scheduled to meet both Russian and Ukrainian officials.
Rather embarrassingly, Witkoff struggled to name these “new regions” of the Russia Federation, and required some prompting from Carlson. Zelensky and his ultra-nationalist clique still refuses to discuss giving up any of their lost territory – which means that any meaningful negotiations ares really dead in the water- despite the 24/7 media hype and talking points being generated by the White House.
To his credit, Witkoff appeared to recognize that legal refereneda and elections were held in the new regions, and he acknowledges this as evidence of their desire to split from the embattled Ukraine.
“They’re Russian-speaking….There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” said Witkoff.
How embarrassing. But not surprising.
@realDonaldTrump@potus’s chief foreign policy envoy Steve Witkoff can’t even remember the names of the Donbass regions. He and the rest of Trump’s team are almost all charlatans, who are ‘winging it’, believing they are getting away with… https://t.co/drBHCYt5cJ
— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) March 22, 2025
To his credit, Witkoff does seem to recognize the constitutional constraints in Kiev which prevents Zelensky and Ukrainian hardliners from conceding any territory lost to Russia. This sticking point is what Witkoff is calling “the elephant in the room” of these negotiations.
“The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: Will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?” Witkoff told Carlson.
He then adds, “Can Zelensky survive politically if he acknowledges this? This is the central issue in the conflict.”
The U.S. is well aware that Zelensky continues to paint himself into a corner on the issue, regularly lashing out, saying that Ukraine will never recognize “the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian.”
However, Witkoff laments that because of this, Zelensky may be “dragging out the process for a long, long time.”
By contrast, Witkoff describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as “gracious”, as well as “smart” and “straightforward.”
“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,” said Witkoff.
Witkoff went on to indicate that the Trump team were exploring options with Moscow about “integrating their energy policies in the Arctic” – referring to commercial maritime sea lanes.
“Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the United States are doing, collaboratively, good things together?” he said.
All of this indicates some potential for positive dialogue going forward, but the public still waits for the actual substance of any negotiations to materialize.
Conversely, Trump is also appearing to make a hard-play towards seizing Ukrainian energy infrastructure and rare earth minerals, supposedly as part of some ‘peace plan’ package – but to date, nothing has been officially agreed upon.
So the war continues.
And the world continues to wait.
READ MORE UKRAINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Ukraine Files
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