Vladimir Putin is willing to share sovereignty over Crimea with Ukraine, according to a surprise “new peace plan”.
The dictator has sent his trusted interior minister, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, to the United States with new proposals to end the war he started, sources in both Moscow and kyiv say.
Despite being sanctioned, Kolokoltsev was allowed into the United States ostensibly to attend a meeting of UN police chiefs.
But it was a ruse that allowed him to travel to Washington on a VIP plane from Putin’s presidential fleet to convey to the US government the dictator’s true demands for a peace agreement, it is claimed.
Prominent Ukrainian television journalist Dmitry Gordon said he had received details of the package from “our intelligence sources”, while Russian Telegram channel Gosdumskaya – which claims to have inside sources in Moscow – separately reported on a similar set of demands from Putin.
Vladimir Putin (pictured) is willing to share Crimean sovereignty with Ukraine, according to a surprising “new peace plan”
Ukrainian civilians walk through rubble on a war-torn central street in the city of Toretsk, Ukraine
A bomb crater and residential buildings destroyed by a Russian airstrike in the village of Borova
The package is likely to be unacceptable to Ukraine, which would have to give up huge chunks of the invaded territory and be barred from joining NATO, but it is concessionary compared with Putin’s demands in May.
The Kremlin dictator would benefit from going to war.
“The main purpose of his (Kolokoltsev’s) arrival was to deliver Russia’s peace plan to the American authorities,” Gordon said, claiming it was Putin’s plan “to end the war.”
The demands were that Ukraine should completely withdraw from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, both partially annexed by Russia.
But Russia would hand over the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and the nearby city of Energodar to Ukraine.
The possible transfer of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions to Ukrainian control will also be discussed.
Crimea would become a “specially demilitarized administrative territory with dual subordination to Ukraine and the Russian Federation.”
“Ukraine must take legally binding international guarantees not to block water supplies to Crimea,” Gordon said, reading from a document.
Infantry secures the area for the 3rd Assault Brigade at dusk on July 1, 2024 in the Kharkiv region
Soldiers work on the scene as the building and surrounding vehicles are reduced to rubble after a Russian airstrike on a post office in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Putin seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and vowed never to return it to Ukraine.
Ukraine would also control a 62-mile “demilitarized zone” along the Dnipro River.
Ukraine’s military would have a legal maximum size and the country would not be able to join NATO, a key goal of Zelinsky’s.
But Putin would not seek to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU.
The West would lift sanctions on Russian oil and gas, as well as the banking sector.
Gordon said the size of the army was 350,000, but the Gosdumskaya Telegram channel said it was 150,000.
The UN meeting attended by the Russian minister was a “diversionary tactic,” Gordon said.
Ukrainian military personnel from the Ochi reconnaissance unit launched a Fury drone to fly over Russian positions on the front in Donetsk
A soldier rests as infantry secures the area for the 3rd Assault Brigade at dusk on July 1, 2024 in the Kharkiv region.
“Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be transferred to Ukrainian control, because this would lead, they say, to the imminent genocide of the population of the territory, a third of whom participated in hostilities against Ukraine,” Gordon said.
There has been no official comment from the United States, Russia or Ukraine on the alleged secret contacts related to Kolokoltsev’s visit.
Interestingly, Kolokoltsev’s plane was seen alongside former US President Donald Trump’s plane when he arrived in Washington.
Trump has promised he could quickly end the debilitating war if re-elected and suggested this would involve Ukraine giving up territory in exchange for security guarantees without becoming a NATO member.
Kolokoltsev, 63, has been Putin’s interior minister for 12 years, in charge of the Russian police.
