Russian President Vladimir Putin told Trump administration officials this week that he would halt the war against Ukraine in exchange for Eastern Ukraine, a region known as the Donbas, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Putin conveyed the proposal to U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday, according to the report.
Putin offered a complete ceasefire if Ukraine agreed to withdraw its military forces from all of the eastern Donetsk region, according to the report. Russia occupies most of Donetsk but Ukraine holds sizable chunks of the territory, the Journal reported.
Under such a deal, Russia would control Donetsk, Luhansk, as well as the Crimea peninsula, seized in 2014.
Putin's proposal was met with skepticism from some Ukrainian and European officials, who asserted it's a ploy to evade the sanctions and tariffs that President Donald Trump vowed to implement on Russia if a ceasefire agreement wasn't reached by Friday, his deadline to Putin, the Journal reported.
Trump announced Friday that he had agreed to meet with Putin at a time and place to be determined, but the president did not mention Putin's reported proposal.
The proposal, if accepted, would be impemented in two phases, according to the report. In the first, Ukrainian forces would withdraw from Donetsk and the battle lines would be frozen. In a second, Putin and Trump would hammer out a final peace plan that would later be negotiated with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to the report.
The Journal reported that a Ukrainian official who was on the first call Wednesday, which Trump also participated in, said Kyiv wasn’t opposed to the proposal in principle but that a ceasefire would be a prerequisite for any subsequent steps.
Zelenskyy has previously said he would discuss territories with Putin only after Russia agreed to a full and unconditional ceasefire.
Trump told Newsmax one week ago that he was prepared to slap sanctions on Russia on Friday if a deal wasn't done but said Putin's "pretty good with sanctions. He knows how to avoid sanctions."
He also lamented that he thought he had reached an agreement with Putin three different times to end the war.
"I talked to Putin a lot, and I think we had a great conversation. Then I go home and I see that a bomb was dropped in Kyiv and some of the various cities, killing people. I say, you know, I just had this great conversation with him, and it looked like we were going to — I thought we had it worked out three different times, and maybe he wants to try and take the whole thing. I think it's going to be very hard for him," he said.
This story has been updated.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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