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Russia has dismissed European newspaper reports that US President Joe Biden offered President Vladimir Putin one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory to end the war. Photo/REUTERS
MOSCOW – The Kremlin has denied European newspaper reports claiming that United States (US) President Joe Biden offered the President of Russia Vladimir Putin one fifth area Ukraine to end the war.
“It’s a rumour,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov when asked by the media about the report, as reported by the TASS news agency, Saturday (4/2/2023).
On Thursday, Swiss-German newspapers; Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), reports that CIA Director William Burns has traveled to Moscow with a peace proposal from Biden that would see Ukraine ceding 20 percent of its territory to Russia.
The report follows an article in The Washington Post last month that said Burns had recently met secretly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Ukraine.
Also read: US Denies CIA Boss Offers Putin One-Fifth of Ukraine’s Territory to End the War
However, US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett previously told Newsweek that the report from NZZ was not accurate.
A CIA official also called the information “absolutely untrue”.
When asked another question Friday about whether or not Burns met Putin in Moscow last month, Peskov replied: “In January? All this news is hearsay.”
The NZZ report comes as Russian officials recently said that any negotiations for peace with Ukraine at this point looked unlikely.
On Monday, Peskov told reporters that peace talks between Moscow and Kiev were now impossible because there were no de facto or de jure conditions for them.