Kyiv, Ukraine - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday 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.

Witkoff 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," Zelensky 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," Zelensky added.

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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 recognized 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.