One of Donald Trump’s top foreign policy envoys has been criticised for being unable to remember the names of the Ukrainian territories that he is negotiating with Russia over.

Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer with no prior diplomatic experience, floundered on TV as he tried to reel off the Russian-occupied districts of Donbas, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk.

“I think the largest issue in the conflict is those so-called four regions ... Donbas, Crimea, Lugansk... and there’s two others,” he said during an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News journalist.

Mr Witkoff’s failure to remember the names of territories was taken as proof by critics that the Trump administration is out of its depth in the Ukraine-Russia negotiations. They also pointed out that Mr Witkoff had confused Crimea for one of the four occupied eastern territories, when in fact it is an area on the Black Sea that was seized by the Kremlin in 2014.

Mr Witkoff also said that the occupied territories had held referendums “where the overwhelming majority of people have indicated they want to be under Russian rule”.

He was referring to Kremlin-organised votes six months after invasion in 2022, widely denounced as sham votes designed to give the Russian land-grab a veneer of legitimacy.

“Witkoff can’t even remember the names of the Ukrainian oblasts [territories] that Putin wants,” wrote one critic on Twitter.

“He cites a sham vote organized by the FSB as ‘evidence’ that people in these regions want to join Russia ... It’s deeply concerning that someone who is supposed to be a neutral negotiator between two warring countries is siding with the aggressor and spreading their propaganda.”