Strangest line in the peace chatter: What Putin told Russia’s billionaires about ending the war with Ukraine

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what the Kremlin says is a "special military operation."

President Vladimir Putin told some of Russia's top businessmen that he might be open to swapping some territory controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine but that he wanted the whole of Donbas, the Kommersant newspaper reported.

Andrei Kolesnikov, the Kremlin correspondent for the Kommersant, one of Russia's top newspapers, said that Putin briefed top businessmen on the details of the plan at a late-night Kremlin meeting on December 24.

"Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian side is still ready to make the concessions that he made in Anchorage. In other words, that 'Donbas is ours,'" Kommersant reported.

In essence, Putin wants the whole of Donbas but outside that area "a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out," Kolesnikov wrote in the newspaper.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in remarks to reporters released by his office on Wednesday, said Ukrainian and U.S. delegations had inched closer to finalising a 20-point plan at the talks over the weekend in Miami.

But Zelenskiy said Ukraine and the United States had not found common ground on demands that Ukraine cede the parts of Donbas that it still controls - or on the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which is controlled by Russian forces.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two and his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been negotiating with Russia, Ukraine and European powers.

The full detail of the U.S. proposals has not been disclosed, though Russian officials have repeatedly referred to unspecified "understandings" reached between Putin and Trump at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August.

RUSSIA DEMANDS DONBAS

Russia controls all of Crimea which it annexed in 2014, about 90% of Donbas, 75% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.

Putin said on December 19 that he thought a peace deal should be based on the principles of the conditions he set out in 2024: Ukraine withdrawing from all of Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and Kyiv officially renouncing its aim to join NATO.

According to Kommersant, Putin also raised the issue of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, at his meeting with businessmen.

Putin, according to Kommersant, said that joint Russian-U.S. management of the nuclear power station was being discussed.

Putin also said that the United States had expressed an interest in crypto mining near the plant and that the plant should be used to partially supply Ukraine, Kommersant said.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 in what the Kremlin says is a "special military operation."