MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/: Reports that the US allegedly offered a plan involving territorial concessions from Ukraine in exchange for peace are just plain false, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"That’s a canard," the Kremlin spokesman said on Friday when asked to comment on media reports that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns allegedly passed on such a proposal to Moscow.
When responding to a question clarifying whether Burns actually came to Moscow in January to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Peskov stressed: "In January? All this news [about the US plan] is a canard."
Earlier, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung quoted its sources as saying that US President Joe Biden instructed the CIA chief to find out whether Russia and Ukraine were ready for negotiations. According to the newspaper, Washington offered the Ukrainians to give up 20% of their territory in exchange for peace, but Moscow and Kiev were allegedly not satisfied with such an option.
The White House called these allegations groundless. Newsweek magazine quoted Sean Davitt, the deputy spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, as saying that the information published in the Swiss newspaper was "not accurate". In turn, an unnamed CIA official said that reports of Burns allegedly visiting Moscow in January at the request of the White House with a proposal for a peace settlement were "completely false".
