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UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR Zelenskyy has accused US envoy Steve Witkoff of “spreading Russian narratives” after he suggested a peace deal with Russia hinged on the status of Ukraine’s occupied territories.
Zelenskyy’s comments come as Witkoff and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in Paris meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov are all in attendance, as are the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Germany’s national security adviser Jens Ploetner.
“This is a very important occasion for convergence,” Macron said in English after hosting the US officials for lunch earlier today.
“I think everybody wants to get peace for sure, and a robust and sustainable peace,” Macron said.
Macron’s office said the purpose of the Paris talks was to “review progress on peace negotiations aimed at ending the Russian aggression in Ukraine”.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the Paris meeting.
“Unfortunately we see from Europeans a focus on continuing the war,” he said.
Russia’s top economic negotiator Kirill Dmitriev said certain countries were trying to “derail” Moscow’s talks with the United States.
Witkoff, who until he took up the role as Donald Trump’s special envoy had no experience in diplomacy, met Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg last Friday, his third meeting with the Russian leader in two months as US President Donald Trump intensified efforts to broker a ceasefire in the three-year war.
“I believe that Mr Witkoff has taken on the strategy of the Russian side. I think it is very dangerous, because he is consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, spreading Russian narratives,” Zelenskyy told journalists.
“I don’t see him as having a mandate to discuss Ukrainian territories, because our territories belong to our people, not only to us, but to future Ukrainians. So I don’t understand what he is talking about at all,” Zelenskyy added.
Witkoff told Fox News on Monday that a peace settlement hinged on “so-called five territories” – the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, that Russia claims to have annexed.
The Kremlin wants its claims over the regions to be recognised as part of any peace deal, a proposal that Ukraine has balked at. Moscow does not fully control any of them, except for Crimea, which it seized in 2014.
With reporting from AFP
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